16 SOME USEFUL AUSTRALIAN BIRDS. 



quantities in the early part of the year) ; yet later on these birds can do quite 

 a lot of damage in a fruit orchard among ripe fruit, and can clean out a ripe 

 pear or persimmon when once they get an opening in the side. The bird- 

 lover knows of a number of his feathered friends in this doubtful position. 

 We have the pretty little Rosella parrot, a seed-eater all through the winter 

 months, but capable of doing a lot of damage in an apple orchard when once 

 he takes to fruit, and shot as a pest in many of our southern orchards. 

 Quite a number of the green " keets " ai'e the greatest enemies that the 

 cherry-growers have in the north. 



Yet again we have the Bee-bird (Merops ornatus), and the Wood-swallows 

 {Artamus) ; they are purely insectivorous in their diet, and must kill an 

 enormous number of insects, and as the wood-swallows often come south in 

 the early summer to nest, just at the time when the grasshoppers are tra- 

 velling in the same direction, they are friends of no small importance to the 

 fai-mer. But let them come into the bee-keeper's country, and their fondness, 

 for honey-bees make them his bitterest enemies. 



Returning to the difference, or change, in our fauna produced by systematic 

 rabbit poisoning, the writer thinks a great many loose statements are made. 

 In the first instance, it is not from the actual eating of the poisoned pollard 

 baits that native birds are killed, but from feeding upon the dead bodies of 

 the poisoned rabbits, and, therefore, it is among the larger carnivorous birds 

 that the death-roll is greatest. Many of these destroy eggs and nestlings of 

 birds quite as useful as themselves. One of the most deadly enemies of 

 nestling birds, particularly of those birds that nest in holes in trees, is the 

 large monitor lizard (the " gohanna " of the bushman), so common in all 

 inland forest countiy. The poisoning of rabbits has caused the death of 

 thousands of these iguanas, and while in the Brewarrina district I noted that 

 wherever there were baits or dead rabbits, dead iguanas were to be found 

 near every tank or dam. 



When bringing in laws to pi'otect our native fauna we must remember,, 

 when dealing with the larger birds and animals, that at one time before 

 settlement the blacks and their dogs always acted as a corrective influence 

 on the breeding of wild animals, and the great droughts that passed over the 

 interior were a great check on over-population of forest and plain. It is only 

 a few years ago that the Victorian Government made a strict close season for 

 the larger kangaroos in the Gippsland forests, yet, in 1909, some of the 

 farmers in the protected areas found their crops so badly damaged by the 

 increasing numbers of kangaroos that they waited upon the Premier and 

 asked that the close season be altered. If a protected bird or animal becomes 

 a pest, owing to this protection, its numbers must be reduced. In the United 

 States, under the game laws this is recognised, aiid permission to shoot in 

 protected areas granted, the quantity of game per man being regulated by 

 the State authorities and game wardens. In California and Texas, in certain 



