. The animals of New Zealand; an account of the dominion's air-breathing vertebrates . urgency. The excitement that prevailed wasintense. They were never silent and never at rest. They turned-completely round with one hop oft the branch, and with anotherhop tliey turned hm^k again. I watched them for several minutes,trying in vain to fathom the cause of their activity. They hadno time, apparently, to feed upon the insects on the tree, but assoon as they saw me underneath, they peeped down over theibranches and through the leaves, and gave many signs of theinterest and curiosity my presence had
. The animals of New Zealand; an account of the dominion's air-breathing vertebrates . urgency. The excitement that prevailed wasintense. They were never silent and never at rest. They turned-completely round with one hop oft the branch, and with anotherhop tliey turned hm^k again. I watched them for several minutes,trying in vain to fathom the cause of their activity. They hadno time, apparently, to feed upon the insects on the tree, but assoon as they saw me underneath, they peeped down over theibranches and through the leaves, and gave many signs of theinterest and curiosity my presence had aroused in their breasts. Their cries have very little variety, but are not at allmonotonous. They are like, Chee, chee, chee; chee, chee, cliee;chee, chee, chee, repeated time after time, without end. By THE WHITEHEAD 101 placing the back of ray hand to my lips, and sucking in my lipswith a labial sound, I made a fairly good imitation of their brought them nearer, and some of them came so close thatI could almost have stretched out mv hand and touched them. Brown Creeper. I tfltj. Eribits and Terror.) Wliile I was watching their strange antics, the twitter suddenlystopped for a few seconds. When it began again, it was dyingaway in the distance over the tree-tops. The whole flock hadsuddenly thought of some urgent business in another part of theforest, and had set out post haste to attend to it. I saw very 102 THE ANIMALS OP NEW ZEALAND many whiteheads on the sanctuary afterwards, but I never sawone passing the time in idleness. I never knew one to be silentfor more than a few seconds, and I never saw any signs of fearamongst them at the presence of a human being. The ratheroppressive silence of the dark and gloomy forests was brokenmore frequently by whiteheads than by any other birds. Some-times one of them would raise its voice out of the usual twitter,and would give expression to a fairly loud and very pleasing
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