IlilDID^. 



distinguished by some pastoralists as tiie most useful bird in Australia, and undoubtedly it is 

 in their mterests, for the large number of grasshoppers and other injurious insects and their larvae 

 it destroys in the season. Gould also pointed out that it consumed large numbers of grass- 

 hoppers. It has been recorded by various writers from nearly every part of Australia, the range 

 extending to Tasmania, but where the bird can only be looked upon in the light of a straggler, it 

 being included in the Tasmanian Avi-faunafrom a bird shot at Montagu, on the nortli-west coast, 



in December, iSg3, and forwarded 

 by Dr. Lonsdale Holden to the Tas- 

 manian Museum, Hobart. 



In New South Wales it was 

 unusually abundant on the Liver- 

 pool Plains in November, 1896, 

 and from Breeza to Gunnedah these 

 birds could be seen dotted over the 

 pastoral lands, intent on the capture 

 of locusts or grasshoppers, the 

 stomachs of three specimens being 

 distended entirely with these insects. 

 It was an animating sight to see 

 large flocks intent on the closest 

 scrutiny of every grass tussock, 

 with their long curved bills probing 

 and feeling in every direction, while 

 e<iually striking were the flocks 

 flying in inverted \'-shaped lines 

 high in the air. (Jver a hundred 

 miles of country I met with these 

 birds in lesser or greater flocks, for in the same month large numbers frequented the East 

 Narrabri Racecourse, and allowed of a close approach. With a continuance of unusually dry 

 weather, for the first time I noted the Straw-necked Ibis frei]uenting the suburbs of Sydney during 

 April and May, 1897. At Goodlet's Bush, on the outskirts of Ashfield, and at Belmore they 

 were common and as tame as domestic fowls, visiting the dividing allotments that separated 

 the fences of some dwellings, and taking to wing only when one was a few yards from them. 

 One could easily see their usual metliod of feeding, which consisted in constantly moving the 

 bill here and there over the surface of the ground, exploring every recess between the grass 

 tufts, apparently obtaining more insects by feeling or disturbing them, than by seeing, chasing, 

 or deliberate capture. The stomach of an adult male, presented by the late Mr. H. Newcombe 

 to the Trustees of the .\ustralian Museum, and shot by him at Randwick on the 24th May, 

 1897, was filled with male crickets, beetles, spiders, portion of a frog, and two lizards. 



In its change of plumage from youth to maturity it resembles very much the preceding 

 species. Young birds have the wings and upper parts of the body blackish-brown, head and 

 neclc dusky-brown, most of the feathers of the latter having whitish margins; sides of chest 

 blackish-brown ; centre of tlie lower neck and remainder of the under surface white. Wing 

 i3'5 inches. Semi-adult birds have the head covered with brownish-black feathers, entire neck 

 white with the straw-coloured plumes in the front, but shorter than in the adults, the purple, 

 green and bronze gloss on the upper parts of the wings and body, too, are far less brilliant than 

 in the adult, which it equals in wing-measurement, 15 inches. The distribution of the glossy 

 colours is subject to variation, even in adult biriis, and is I believe due to age, but generally 

 they are as described above ; some specimens have the median series of the upper wing-coverts 



STKAW-NECKKD IISIS. 



