THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 77 



In writing of the Black Cockatoos, of which there are seven 

 species, Mr. Gould refers to them as being strictly arboreal. Mr. 

 Price Fletcher, in his notes to me at a recent date, writes that 

 two of the species, according to his observations, are by no means 

 strictly arboreal, but can be seen in the North Queensland 

 interior feeding along the plains or among the reed-beds. Again, 

 instead of being confined to small companies, flocks of Leach's 

 Cockatoo numbering loo to 150 are by no means uncommon. 

 Further, the remark as to each division of the continent having 

 its own peculiar species will not apply to Queensland, for six 

 species can there be found, amongst these the Funeral, the 

 common species in Victoria. It is with this bird my notes are 

 now concerned. 



Funeral Cockatoo, Calyptorynchus funereus, Shaw (W.)"'' — Our 

 district is not wild enough to be the home of any black cockatoo, 

 more especially this species. Three or more of these great birds 

 screeching in their heavy flight along a humid valley impresses 

 one. Especially in the springtime does it, by the peculiar life 

 it then leads — as you sit upon a hillside above millions of wattle 

 blooms and watch the slow flap of the great yellow-eared and 

 black bird within a few yards of your hidden form. It is so 

 different an observation to watching the Sericornis beneath the 

 jungle of ferns, musks, and small acacias below you, hunting for 

 its food. The staple diet of the Funeral species is the larva of 

 the Goat Moth or similar kinds, according to their abundance, and 

 I venture to say as much partiality is shown for them as by the 

 Roman epicure, the Australian bushman, or the aboriginal. I 

 have seen great trees almost denuded of their bark by the attacks 

 of these birds upon them in search for grubs. The absence of 

 Woodpeckers (Picidse) in Australia is partly substituted by this 

 bird, for in all other forest-bearing countries the woodpecker 

 family of birds is the natural enemy of wood-eating larvae. As 

 orchards open up beyond our eastern suburbs, this bird will play 

 its rule very nicely if left alone, for the time is coming when 

 longicorn and other beetle larvae will run amok within the trees 

 introduced for profit. The tap-tap of the woodpecker is not so 

 disastrous to the tree as is the " bark wrencher " of the cockatoo. 

 A nom de plume writer in an old paper speaks of a great mass of 

 timber levelled in the area between the Latrobe and Tangil 

 Rivers, in order to oust out a horde of hungry grubs. This 

 happened in the vicinity of Pleasant, Icy, Camp, and Russell 

 Creeks. The whole country behind the Baw Baws seems 

 at times to be blockaded by these birds. Great scars in the 

 trees assume the V shape, some two inches deep, and young 

 and old very quickly disfigure a part of forest in search of juicy 

 grubs. The one-year-old bird is not nearly so expert as the 

 warrior of maturer years, for while he thinks and hesitates, the 



