8o NiCHOLLS, A Trip to the West. [ 



Emu 

 2nd Oct. 



It was whilst camped with a party of naturahsts at Tor Bay, a 

 little estuary of the sea some fifteen miles to the westward of Albany, 

 that a search was made for that rara avis, the Noisy Scrub-Bird 

 {Atrichia clamosa). One damp morning, after buttering our boots 

 as Thoreau did for his long walks in the Maine woods, we left camp 

 to work the valley behind the first ridge of sand hills on the western 

 side of the bay. It is very dense, with a close growth of squat tea- 

 tree, dwarfed peppermint, and a strange, short, stumpy bush, which 

 covers acres of ground, and is bound together by a species of dodder. 

 It makes a tangle so thick that one forces his way through it with 

 difficulty, but it is fine cover for the flocks of Brown Quail {Synacus 

 australis), which are there this year in exceptional numbers. We 

 stopped often, as much to take breath, I think, as to listen for that 

 characteristic note, which all naturalists who have heard it describe 

 as a loud, rising whistle, ending with a sharpness like the crack of a 

 whip. But the roar of the surf upon the sands was so great that 

 it smothered all lesser distant sounds. So we struck inland to the 

 tall karri {Eticalyptus) timber, which looked such a promising field 

 for search. High up in the karri gums Parrakeets were feeding and 

 squabbling. The largest of them all, the Yellow-collared [Barnardiiis 

 semitorqiiatus), is better known as the " Twenty-eight," from its 

 call. It is as large almost as the King Lory [Aprusmictus cyano- 

 pygiiis), green in colour, except for the blackish-brown head and 

 necklet of bright yellow. We shot one, and as it fell shrieking to 

 the ground, fifty or so of the Parrakeets fluttered round in circles 

 amongst the tree-tops, calling "Twenty-eight" in plain and forcible 

 English. When we picked up the bird by the leg a stream of honey 

 flowed from its bill. It was gorged with the rich nectar of the 

 flowering karri, jarrah, and red (beautiful-leafed) gums ; fully four 

 or five tablespoonfuls must have trickled from it. All through the 

 year, in this south-western corner of the State, there is a constant 

 succession of honey-bearing trees and shrubs in flower. We were 

 now in the same valley that Campbell had traversed fifteen years 

 before, when he obtained his specimen — a male — of the mysterious 

 Scrub-Bird.* Once I fired blindly at sight of a small brown bird 

 running through the scrub, but soon found that I was only alarming 

 myself unnecessarily, as well as the Brown Quails. We were taking 

 no risks of missing " Mrs. Atrichia," as Jackson calls her. Occasion- 

 ally we stepped out upon grassy glades, with the " pads " of wallabies 

 and bandicoots crossing and running into one another like the lines 

 in a railway yard. We crawled through tangles, and searched 

 thicket after thicket, watching, listening, and startled occasionally 

 by false alarms, when the Buff-bellied Shrike-Thrush {CoUvriocincla 

 rufiventris), Rufous Tree-creeper {Climacteris rufa), and Western 

 Thickhead {Pachycephalus occidentalis) burst into their sharp, loud 

 whistle. The Thickhead's note, cracking like a little coachwhip, 

 frequently deceived us. Otherwise there was never a note 



* One nest has since been found (" Nesl and Eggs," Campbell, p. i,oSo), but the 

 female has never been obtained. 



