THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



The ordinary clutch is four elongated white eggs, which are 

 unevenly covered with lime. Tiie young are fed with partially 

 digested food, the little ones putting their beaks well into the 

 throat of the parent bird to receive it, the old bird seeming to 

 jerk the food up. On losing the down the young of the Pied 

 have only a comparatively small patch of white on the breast and 

 do not get their full plumage until the third year. When dis- 

 turbed they frequently climb out of their nests on to the higher 

 branches, and, to help themselves up, frequently insert their head 

 or neck into a fork above them, but occasionally the fork is 

 narrow, and the bird, being unable to extricate itself, gets hung. 

 But many of the young just tumble over the edge of the nest on 

 to the ground below, the concussion frequently killing them if the 

 soil is hard ; but if they fall in the water they at once dive, and, 

 keeping their body under water, put up their head through some 

 vegetation or alongside some fallen brushwood or timber, and try 

 to escape notice by remaining perfectly still, and they frequently 

 succeed. 



The Black Cormorant is not nearly so numerous, and they 

 build on the highest and most inaccessible branches they can 

 find, and not necessarily close together like the smaller kinds. 

 Nankeen Herons were also plentiful, and their nests, which 

 were situated high up on very slender branches, were rather bulky 

 structures and composed of twigs and well lined with eucalyptus 

 leaves, green twigs with the leaves attached being often used in 

 building. Many broken egg-shells from which the young had 

 been hatched were lying on the ground. The clutch consists of 

 three very light blue eggs, but when they are first laid they are of 

 a light green colour, but soon turn to the delicate blue shade. 

 My brothers in Western Australia, in mentioning about a 

 rookery of these birds that tliL-y visited on one of the islands, 

 state that they nested there under bushes or ledges of rock, many 

 making practically no nest except a few twigs, and again others 

 only half a nest, if the site was situated on sloping ground, to 

 prevent the egg rolling down hill, but they also found some 

 beautifully constructed nests in the caves and sides of the cliff, 

 where they looked very picturesque against the filigree rockwork 

 as a background. The eggs varied a good deal in shape and size. 



The principal item of the food of the Riverina birds seemed 

 to consist of small crayfish or yabbies, and remains of these 

 crustaceans were plentiful beneath the trees on which their nests 

 were. In every case I noticed it was the male bird sitting on 

 the nest, and not the female — she was either away hunting for 

 food or sitting on a branch close by, and on one occasion I 

 observed her feeding the male as he sat on the nest, but do not 

 know if they do it regularly or not. The young were mostly very 

 small at the time of our visit. 



