g^2 NESTS AXD EGGS 01- AUSTRALIAN BIRDS. 



Sir Walter Buller gives such a true and gi-aphic pictiu'e of the lilack 

 Shag, that I cauuot help quoting him : " It walks with awkward, 

 waddhug gait, supporting itself in part with its tail, which is moved 

 alternately to the right and left at every step. It has a very foetid 

 odour ; and a person approaching a flock of t hese birds, on the leeward 

 side, is made sensible of this at a hundred yards or more. Its usual 

 attitude on the beach is one of repose, with the body inclined forward, 

 the tail resting full length on the gi-ound, and the head di-awn in upon 

 the shoulders. When distui-bed it instantly stretches up its ueck, 

 Ustens and watches attentively for a second or two, and then, after a 

 few ungainly steps, shoots its white ordui-e along the sands, then rises 

 into the air with laboured flapping of its wings, and flies off in the 

 direction of the sea, into which it speechly plimges." 



The Black Coi-morant is usually shy, wary, and difficult to approach ; 

 its eggs are also rare in collections. 



Cormorants are deemed vermin simply because they devour fish, 

 making them scarce. But there were plenty of Cormorants before wliitc 

 men came to the coimtiy, and abundance of fish too. No, it is ci\dhsed 

 man and not the poor Cormorants that are destroying our fisheries. 

 Miss A. M. Ellis, who, with her sisters, was reared on the lower 

 Blackwood River, West Australia, and can muii a boat with anyone, 

 carefully collected examples of eggs and made observations of various 

 Cormorants for me that bred in a rookery on the river, not far from 

 her home. Miss Ellis described three species — the Black, the Little 

 Black, and the Little — breeding, as she said, in " a kind of happy 

 family," on the bent stems and forked branches of tea-trees ( Mi-hilciird). 

 The large Black consti-ucted its nest of twigs and leaves, while the oilier 

 two species made theirs entirely of the paper-like bark of the trees. 

 It was also observed that when the birds were disturbed, the big Black 

 birds, on leaving their nests, dived into the water, while the other two 

 kinds flew round overhead. Date, end of August, 1889. 

 Breeding months, August to Nov(nnbcr. 



721- — PiiALACKocoKAX suLCJ iJosTRis, Brandt. — (G56) 

 LITILE BLACK CORMORANT. 



Figure. — Gould : Birds of Australia, fol., vol. vii., pi. 67. 



Reference. — Cat. Birds Brit. Mus., vol. xxvi., p. 376. 



Previous Descriptions oj Eggs. — Campbell : Southern ycience Record 

 (1883); North: Austn. Mus. Cat. p. 367 (1889). 



Geoyraphical Didrihution. — -Australia in geneial and Tasmania; 

 also New Zealand, New Caledonia, and from New Guinea to Borneo. 



NeM. — Roughly constructed of sticks, in some instances entirely of 

 bark, and placed on a stem or fork of a low tree over water, in a 

 rookery, sometimes in company with those of one or more other species 

 of Cormorants. 



