764 



NESTS A.VD EGGS OF AUSl'RALIAN BIRDS. 



18 lbs. as a fail- weight ; while a sporting gentleman in Western Australia 

 infoiTned me that his bag of Tiu-keys for three months of the season 

 1889 was 44, the average weight being 14 lbs. or 1.5 lbs. lu one instance 

 only the maximum of 21 lbs. was reached. 



Though these useful birds are now protected all the year roimd in 

 Victoria, we hear wliispers of their being served up at electorate dinners 

 in the northern provinces. Tliis is veiy wi-ong. What is the use of 

 asking our legislators to extend better protection to our useful and 

 ornamental birds when they are the Jirst to transgi'ess their own enacts 

 ments? Why are Bustards becoming so scarce? Partly on accoimt of 

 their destruction, and partly on account, says an accurate observer, of 

 the depasturing of stock, wliich destroys the birds' favourite feeding- 

 grounds. Even the aborigines notice tliis, and discard their own 

 language to express more forcibly to you tliat " blank jumbucks (sheep) 

 walk, walk ; eat, eat ; never sleep ; hunt em everything away. " 



The Bustard has a habit of " planting " or feeding behind cover when 

 danger threatens. When erectj it stands between three feet and foui- 

 feet in height, and has, when walking, a slow and majestic cai'riage. On 

 the wing, also, it is easily recognised by its hea\'y flight, with long, out- 

 stretched neck. Its food consists of grasses and other vegetation, lizards, 

 insects, chiefly locusts, &c. 



Respecting the habits of birds coming in to drink, 1 am infonned 

 by Mr. H. W. Ford when in the interior of New South Wales, between 

 the Paroo and Wai'rego Rivers, 1883-4-5, he noticed that the Wild 

 Tiu-key (Bustard) never flies right up to the water, but always settles 

 two hundred or three himdred yards away, and walks in. Sometimes, 

 he thinks, they walk in miles, because he never saw one fly right in, but 

 has noticed them walking in over half a mile on the plains. They 

 come to water nioniing and evening, and sometimes through the day. 



" Bush Naturalist," in writing for " The Queenslander," 2'2nd Jime, 

 1878, gives his observations as to how the natives catch the Wild 

 Turkeys. Out of the shaft of one of the wing feathers of a Turkey 

 they make a sort of elastic top to a thin rod till it bends over like a 

 gig whip : this top is made by splitting up a feather shaft and then 

 twisting it up again (something like the way in which a stockman 

 twists the ' cracker ' at the end of his wliip). As this is being twisted, 

 they incorporate with it a thin string made out of the hair of the gins 

 (not traps), and finally finish oil' with a noose ol gin's hair ; the whole 

 apparatus is not unUke a fly-fisher's rod. Ai-med with this and an 

 ordinaiy light spear, the black, having noted some Turkeys, starts oflf, 

 ties the thin rod on to his spear, and actually manages to get so close 

 to the Turkey as to put the noose over the bird's neck, and this, too, 

 in broad daylight, and with no cover to hide himself in, except 

 ordinary long gi-ass ' 



Great have been the arguments whether the Bustaj'd lays one or 

 more eggs. The disputants on botli sides — those who hold to the single 

 egg and those who are satisfied as to the plurality — arc coiTcct, because 

 I leain from a bush natmalist and keen observer that the Wild Turkey, 

 as he calls it, lays one, sometimes two eggs, according to the sea.sons 

 being good or indifferent. Fui'ther, it was his experience that in 



