AN AUSTRALIAN BIRD BOOK. 59 



plumes ''Osprey plumes." Now, the Osprey is a Fish-Hawk, and 



so possibly of little use to the land-dweller, but these plumes grow 

 on the back and neck of a valuable insect destroyer. The extent 

 of this trade is appalling. At one plume sale, held in London 

 on 4th August, 1909, the breeding plumes of 24,000 birds were 

 offered for sale. Think of it! The slow starvation of 40,000 

 nestlings, the death of 64,000 birds, to provide the plumes for one 

 day's sale. No, ladies, if you consider you are in need of orna- 

 ment, wear ostrich plumes and pheasants' feathers, for these do 

 not involve the death of a bird, but rather the reverse, for the 

 greater the demand for these feathers, the more birds will be 

 bred; but spare the Egret. 



The Reef Heron is found on beaches from the Bay of Bengal 

 to New Zealand. It has given scientists much trouble, for it 

 has a pure-white form and a dark slaty-gray form. We 

 found and photographed the nests on Mast Head and Heron 

 Islands. This was a prize, for no photograph of a Reef Heron's 

 nest ha'd been published previously. As soon as the falling tide 

 exposed the reef round the island, Reef Herons, Gulls, Plovers, 

 Dottrels, and Terns, went out to have their next meal. 



The "Blue Crane" of the country dwellers is the "White-fronted 

 Heron" of the bird-lover. "Fronted" in a bird name refers only 

 to the forehead. Herons are valuable birds to the grazier, 

 farmer, and irrigationist, for, in addition to insects and snails, 

 they eat yabbies (fresh-water crayfish), which bore into the banks 

 and bed of irrigation channels, and so cause much loss of water 

 by soakage. 



Distinguished from these birds mainly by its nocturnal habit is 

 the interesting Nankeen Night Heron, our one representative of 

 a practically cosmopolitan genus. Our one Night Heron hides 

 on a leafy bough asleep during the daytime. About dusk he sets 

 off to a swamp. 



The Australian Bittern, also our one representative of a cos- 

 mopolitan genus, skulks in a bed of reeds. Hence it is seldom 

 seen. Its loud, dismal, booming note probably assisted in the 

 formation of the Bunyip legends of the blacks. I saw more Bit- 

 terns in a recent trip down the Brisbane than I ever saw before. 



At breeding time these birds assemble in very large com- 

 panies, and their nesting-places are called heronries or rookeries. 

 The chief rookeries here are in the Riverina, where the great 

 annual overflow of that fine river, the Murray, converts the coun- 

 try into a great series of lakes and swamps. Here water animals 

 live in large numbers, and thousands of birds take advantage of 

 this abundant food supply to nest there in the enormous redgums. 



Each bird is the close relative of a similar bird in Europe, so 

 that what is read concerning Herons and Egrets there, applies 

 equally to our members of this widely-distributed family. Eating 

 grasshoppers and other insects in great numbers, they are friends 

 of the farmer and grazier. Destroying yabbies and other burrow- 

 ing water animals, they are valuable allies of the irrigationist, 

 and it is decidedly bad policy to shoot one. 



