(Official ©rgau of the .Australasian ©rnithologists' Enion. 



" BirUs of a featbcr.' 



Vol. VII.] 1ST JULY, 1907. [Part i. 



On Fifteen Thousand Acres: its Bird^Life Sixty- 

 Years Ago. 



By Isaac Batey, Drouin, Victoria. 



Description of Area. 



The area under consideration is situated some 20 miles north- 

 west of Melbourne, and is part of that extensive rich pastoral 

 country that attracted the first settlers in Victoria's early 

 colonial history. Through it lay the main route to the central 

 goldfields, that were discovered in 1851 and thronged with 

 hundreds of thousands of fortune-seekers from all quarters of the 

 globe. My early field observations extend back to 1846, when, 

 as a young man on my father's station, I roamed the country 

 far and wide. Most of the area is of basaltic origin, and the 

 higher land to the rear marks the position whence, from great 

 fissures and volcanic vents, the ancient lava poured out south- 

 ward as far as Melbourne and Geelong. The subterranean hills 

 of this ancient gold-bearing rock are shown in many places 

 along the creek sides, where the water action has cut down 

 through the superincumbent beds of lava, and exposed them to 

 view. Timber was not plentiful on the basalt, though on the 

 Silurian ridges to the north, and thence inland, the forests of 

 eucalypts were dense. My area and my list of birds have been 

 influenced by this silurian country, for therefrom the lava fields 

 received their first supply of vegetation and of bird life in past 

 times, and from there in the present certain species of birds 

 make annual or periodic incursions on to what is not essentially 

 their true habitat. 



Bounded on the east by Emu Creek, on the west by Mt. 

 Alexander road, the 15,000 acres possess a fine watercourse, 

 Jackson's Creek flowing east through the centre of the block. 

 The course of this stream is nicely timbered with a variety of 

 eucalypts, wattle, with other scrubs, fringing the banks of the 

 stream. Belts of sheoaks {Casnarina) on the uplands above, 

 extend along each side of tlie river, one a mile long, the other 

 about 4 miles in length, in [jarts a mile wide, and forming a dense 

 forest. This last forestry was on Glencoe station, taken up by 



