Vol. VI. 



Stray Feathers. 



71 



Birds of the Grampians, Victoria. — The Grampian 

 Mountains and the Sierras in western Victoria are a unique form- 

 ation. Built entirely of sandstone rock, they stand out from 

 the plain country, tier after tier of peaks of almost similar size 

 and contour. Mt. William, in the north, rises to 3,800 feet above 

 sea level, and the Sierras, extending away to the south in a series 

 of fifty or more pointed peaks like teeth of a giant saw, 

 culminate in Mt. Abrupt (2,700 feet). These mountains are 

 famous the world over for their wild flowers. Hundreds of 

 species are found nowhere else but on their sandy foot-slopes or 

 on the steep rock faces or precipitious ravines that everywhere 

 occur, and it might be expected that bird-life too would be 

 distinctive, but it is not so. It is not a happy hunting ground 

 for birds, and the species that are below recorded confine them- 

 selves mostly to the tea-tree-margined creeks and scrub-lined 

 gullies. The most remarkable bird of all is, perhaps, the Emu. 

 Their droppings are frequently observed, consisting entirely (at 

 this time of the year) of the bright-red flowers of Styphelia 

 sonderi, which seem to pass unaltered in shape through the 

 body, nothing but the colour, and doubtless the nectar, being 

 extracted by the digestive juices. The birds probably pick 

 much of the flower from the ground where it readily falls, but 

 they have also been seen plucking them from the bush. 



Corona australis 

 Strepera graculina 

 Gymnorhina leiiconoia 

 CoUyriocincla harmonica 

 Micrceca fascinans 

 Rhipidiira tricolor 

 Petrceca hggii 



,, phcenicea 



, , bicolor 

 Eopsaltria australis 

 Smicrornis brevirostris 

 Acanthiza lineata 

 ,, nana 



,, pusilla 

 ,, chrysorrhoa 

 Sericornis osculans 

 Geocichla lunulata 

 Mahiriis cyaneus 

 Pachycephata gutturalis 

 Climacteris leucophcsa. 



A. G. Campbell. 



Sittella pileata 

 Meliornis novcB-Jiollavidics 



,, aiistralasiana 

 Melitlireptus lunulatus 

 Ptilotis leucotis 



,, chrysops 

 A canthochcera carunculata 

 A canthorhynchus teniiirostris 

 Manorhina garrula 

 Dicceum hirundinaceum 

 Hirundo neoxena 

 Pardalotus ornatus 



, , punctatus 



Chalcococcyx plagosus 



,, basalts 



Cacomantis flabelliforniis 

 Platycercus elegans 



,, ex'imius 



Trichoglossus novcB-hollandicB 

 DromcBUS novcB-hollandice 



Melbourne, August, 1906. 



Addition. — My visit to the Grampians was during the winter, 

 which may account for the small list of birds. But I find in a 

 back number of TJie Victorian Naturalist (vol. viii., p. 193, April, 

 1892) a long list of birds noted during a camp-out of the 

 Naturalists' Club, when an exhaustive search of the Grampians 



