146



Mr. F. E. Blaauw,



tion, bird treasures are harder to see and rarer to find.* One cannot

bear to think of a day when these beautiful creatures will be lost for

ever, for there is nothing that adds more beauty and sweetness to

our homeland bush than the voice and the presence of Nature’s

sweet singers. Fidelis.



SOME NOTES ON THE BLACK-FACED

IBIS (Theristicus melanops).


Hab. S. America.


By F. E. Blaauw.


Black-faced Ibises have always had a great charm for me,

and off and on I have kept one or more specimens of these beautiful

birds during the last fifteen or twenty years, but I only succeeded

in breeding them last season, 1916.


When I went to South America in 1911, I of course hoped to

see my favourites in their native country, and twice I had the good

fortune to come across them.


I was riding from Los Sauces to Puren, in Southern Chile, and

there, in a green meadow along a small stream some of these beautiful

grey birds with buff head, neck, and underside, and delicate pink

legs were walking amongst a small flock of Andean geese (Bernicla

melanoptera). The second time I saw some was more to the south,

between Puerto Octay and Puerto Montt.


I was riding along some enclosed fields over a road that wa3

more a series of holes than anything else, and there quite a large

flock of some forty blackfaced Ibises had alighted and were busy

probing the ground for grubs.


In Tierra del Fuego , on the Zente Grande estate, I did not

see the birds, but I saw deserted nests of this species.



• [We do not know whether Australia encourages such societies as the Audubon

Society in the United States, and the teaching in schools to the children.

Nesting-boxes for Parrakeets, etc., should be put up by everybody who can

do so.—E d.]



