206 Stray Peathefs. t«shan. 



and when near the Glendon bridge some object struck his wind 

 screen, smashing the thick glass to fragments. Pieces of the glass 

 womided Mr. Dimmock in three places on the face, narrowly 

 missing his eyes, but fortunately he stuck to his steering wheel. 

 On arrival in town he was streaming with blood, and his three 

 wounds had to be stitched, while a piece of glass was extracted 

 from his face. On examining the car the dead body of a Jackass 

 was found in the vehicle. Its head and back were broken, showing 

 that it had had a head-on collision. The car was travelling at a 

 fair speed at the time, and Mr. Dimmock was very lucky in not 

 being much more seriously injured by the flying glass. It was 

 " bad for a coo " when she met a railway train, and the Kooka- 

 burra found it equally bad to get in the way of a motor-car. 



The Gull as a Storm Prophet. — On a beautifully sunny after- 

 noon in mid-May last, a friend and myself noticed a number of 

 Silver Gulls {Lams novcB-hollandicB) going through strange antics 

 in the air over the River Mersey, wheeling in circles at a good 

 height, then diving suddenly towards the water, recovering before 

 touching the surface, and ascending to repeat the performance. 

 Two days afterwards a spell of rough weather set in, with north- 

 west squalls and rain. Again, on the afternoon of 25th September, 

 which was equally fine, with fresh north-west breeze, the Silver 

 Gulls were seen at the same aerial gambols, which were followed 

 within 48 hours by a strong disturbance, with thunder, north-west 

 squalls, and heavy showers. There is no doubt that the birds 

 felt these atmospheric disturbances approaching long before they 

 were perceptible to us, and were impelled to unusual action 

 thereby, in the same way that the domestic cat will sometimes 

 go " fey " twenty- four hours or even more before a cyclonic 

 disturbance, and tear about the rooms and in and out of the house 

 like a mad thing. — H. Stuart Dove, F.Z.S. West Devonport, 

 Tasmania, 31/10/18. 



Pajingo Notes. — I once saw a Wedge-tailed Eagle swoop down 

 and grab a very big tom-cat, gone wild. The Eagle carried the 

 cat up about 30 feet, tlien let it drop — whether to kill it that way 

 or because it could not hold it longer I cannot say. The Eagle 

 at once swooped down again, but the cat cleverly evaded its 

 talons, and before he could rise and make his third swoop effective 

 the cat reached safety in some bushes, and the Eagle, with a 

 defiant flight round our heads, flew away. With Eagles and 

 Crows my theory is they do an immense deal of good in their 

 natural state, but when they become rogues, and find lambs are 

 good, these particular Eagles become a pest, and those Crows 

 that come about homesteads and steal the fowls' food, and 

 chickens when available, give up searching for their natural food, 



