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The Heron Bringing Home Dinner

(315) their elegant tails in an upright position.

Besides its loud full call, which may be heard echoing to a great distance, it can It runs with the utmost rapidity, aided | one else, and rarely suffers it to escape. by its wings, over rocks or logs of wood, Besides its running powers, the bird or whatever comes in its way. It does can take very wonderful leaps. At one not often fly into a tree, except to roost. leap it can rise ten feet from the ground. It scratches about the ground and the Its habits are solitary; but two Lyreroots of trees to pick up seeds and insects. birds have been seen at play, chasing Its nest is very large, and like that of the each other round and round, and carrying magpie. There are twelve or sixteen eggs in the nest, of a white color, with a few light blue spots. The young birds scamper about with the utmost rapidity, sing the little song we have mentioned. and hide themselves amongst the rocks The strain is often broken off suddenly, and bushes. In some places, where roads and then resumed again. The nests are have been cut through the bush, the bird sometimes placed on the ledge of some is more frequently seen, and a man on projecting rock, or on the stump of a tree, horseback can approach it more easily but always near the ground. One of the /than when on foot. It seems less afraid nests which was seen by a naturalist of the horse than of the man. Some- was deep, and shaped like a basin, and times it is pursued by dogs, that are lined with the bark of trees and roots. taught to rush suddenly upon it when it leaps down from its roosting-place in the Elegant Ornaments.

The tail feathers are detached entire tree. And sometimes the hunter wears from the bird, and are sold in the shops one of the beautiful lyre-like tails in his in Sydney in pairs. The price was hat, and keeps it moving about while he formerly low, but as the bird has, from hides in the bushes. The bird is taken being destroyed, as it was not aforetime, by surprise at what he supposes to be one become rare, the tails fetch five to ten of his own species, and is captured.

A Very Shy Bird. dollars per pair. About the ranges of the Tumal country, where gun has seldom. seen. Mr. Bennet is our authority for the following particulars:

Another way is to whistle, or make been carried, they are more frequently some unusual sound, upon which the bird will come forth out of curiosity, and allow himself to be seen; but unless the gun is This bird has its young, like all the fired in a moment, he is half way down wild animals, in the country, and can the valley. Indeed, shooting the Lyre- there be most easily procured. It is heavy bird is totally different to any other kind in flight, but swift of foot. On catching a of sport, and the most clever sportsman glimpse of the sportsman, it runs rapidly, could do nothing unless he understood aided by the wings, in getting over logs the nature of the country and the habits of wood, rocks, or any obstruction to its of the bird. The native is by far the progress; it seldom flies into trees, except most expert hunter of any. He likes to to roost, and then rises only from branch deck his hair with the plumage of the to branch. These birds build in old hol- Lyre-bird, and to glide noiselessly among low trunks of trees, which are lying on the bushes with a gun in his hand. So the ground or in the holes of rocks. The cautious is he, and so silent, that he can nest is formed merely of dried grass or always approach nearer to it than any dried leaves, scraped together. RIS