OF SOUTHERN AUSTRALIA. 255 



together. They are wholesale devourers of apples, pears, 

 peaches, plums, quinces, grapes, figs, and every other kind 

 of fruit, including even unripe date plums, which one would 

 have thought sufficiently astringent to disgust any bird. 

 They are terribly destructive to maize, the sheaths of which, 

 covering the young cobs, they strip back to enable them to 

 pick off the sweet milky grasses just as they are ripening. 



Black-winged Crow-Shrike, nestlings and adult. 



They may be driven off by shooting, but soon return if not 

 continually watched. They are particularly destructive to 

 grapes, which they appear to swallow whole, and, notwith- 

 standing the protection by nets, they manage to get at the 

 fruit by searching carefully for any small opening which may 

 be accidentally left, and even sometimes cut their way through 

 the net itself. If the bunches be bagged they wil] look for a 



