" These cleared spaces arc undoubtedly used as dancing grounds,
but personally I have never seen a bird dancing in them, but
have always found the proprietor either seated quietly in, or
moving backwards and forwards slowly about, them, calling at
short intervals, except in the morning and evening when they
roam about to feed and drink. The males are always to be
found at home, and they roost at night on some tree quite
close by.
" They are the most difficult birds I know of to approach. A
male is heard calling, and you gradually follow up the sound, taking
care not to make the slightest noise, till at last the bird calls
within a few yards of you, and is only hidden by the denseness
of the intervening foliage. You creep forward, hardly daring to
breathe, and suddenly emerge on the open space, but the space is
empty, the bird has cither caught sight of or heard or smelt
you, and has run off quietly. They will never rise, even when
pursued by a dog, if they can possibly avoid it, but run very
swiftly away, always choosing the densest and most impenetrable
part of the forest to retreat through. When once the
cleared space is discovered, it is merely a work of a little
patience to secure t h e bird by trapping it. The easiest way is
to run a low fence of cut scrub round the spot, leaving four
openings just sufficiently wide to enable the bird to pass through,
and in these openings to place nooses fastened to the end of a
pliant sapling, which is bent and kept down by a catch. This
is the usual way, and the one I adopted to secure most of my
specimens, as I found it as difficult to shoot as it was easy to
t r ap them. The natives, however, have other ways of securing
them, all dependent on taking advantage of the bird's
idiosyncracy about keeping its home clean.
" One of these plans, which, though I have never actually seen
it in operation, is, I am informed, really practised, is as
follows :—A bit of bamboo, about 18 or 20 inches long, and a
quarter of an inch wide, is shaved down till it is the thickness
of writing paper, the edges being as sharp as a razor. This
narrow pliant piece ends in a stout sort of handle at one end,
6 or 8 inches long, which is driven firmly into the ground in
the middle of the cleared space.
" T h e bird, in trying to remove it, scratches and pecks at it,
trying to dig it up, but finding all its efforts vain, it twists the
narrow pliant portion several times round its neck, and taking
hold of the bamboo near the ground with its bill, it gives a
sudden spring backwards to try to pull it u p ; the consequence
is that its head is nearly severed from its body by the razor-like
edges of the bamboo.
" Another method is to erect two small posts, about 4 feet
high and 3 feet apart, in the clearing, across the top of which
a bar is firmly fastened ; over this bar a string is run, by one
end of which a heavy block of wood is suspended just under
the bar, while the other end is fastened to a peg lightly driven
into the ground immediately beneath the block. The bird commencing,
as usual, to clear away these obstructions, soon
manages to pull up the peg, and thus releases the heavy block
of wood, which falls and crushes it.
" The males arc not at all quarrelsome, and apparently never
interfere with each other, though they will answer each other's
calls. The call of the male sounds like "how-how," repeated
ten or a dozen times, and is uttered at short intervals when the
bird is in its clearing, one commencing and others in the
neighbourhood answering. The report of a gun will set every
male within hearing calling, and on the least alarm or excitement,
such as a troop of monkeys passing overhead, they call.
" The call of the female is quite distinct, sounding like howowoo,
how-owoo, the last syllable much prolonged, repeated ten
or a dozen times, but getting more and more rapid until it ends
in a series of owoo's run together. Both the call of male and
female can be heard to an immense distance, that of the former
especially, which can be heard at the distance of a mile or more.
Both sexes have also a note of alarm, a short, sharp, hoarse bark.
" The female, like the male, lives quite solitarily, but she has
no cleared space, and wanders about the forest apparently
without any fixed residence. The birds never live in pairs, the
female only visiting the male in his parlour for a short time.
" The food consists chiefly of fallen fruit, which they swallow
whole, especially one about the size and colour of a prune, which
is very abundant in the forests of the south, but they also cat
ants, slugs, and insects of various kinds. These birds all come
down to the water to drink about 10 or 11 A.M., after they have
fed and before they, or at any rate the males, return to their
parlours. They were very common about Malewoon and
Bankasoon, and Mr. Osborne, the superintendent of the mines,
preserved 32 males during a comparatively short period."
" I WAS unable," says Davison, " to find the nest, but, from what
I could learn, the female builds a rude nest on the ground in
some dense cane brake, laying seven or eight eggs, white or
creamy, minutely speckled with brown like a Turkey's, and
hatching and rearing her brood without any assistance or interference
from the male. They are said to have no regular breeding
season, the females laying at all times except during the
depth of the rains. I secured two nestlings about a week old
on the 28th of February.
T H E FOLLOWING are the dimensions and colours of the soft
parts recorded in the flesh :—
Males.—Length 700 to 73-0; expanse, to end of longest
primaries, 49-5 to 5 2'0 ; tail from vent, 495 to 52-0; wing to