186 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



the ground was strewn with broken shells. These birds, as is well 

 known, change the dark youthful plumage for the handsome adult 

 one on reaching the age of three years. The dark beak of the 

 young bird also gets brilliant yellow, commencing to change its 

 colour from the upper portion first, so that towards the end of the 

 third year the tip will be dark brown and the rest yellow, but it 

 soon gets all the same hue. 



On the neighbouring island. Storehouse, we noticed a colony of 

 White-breasted Cormorants, Phalacrocorax gouldi, nesting, and 

 getting into our boat we rowed across, but as we approached the 

 birds flew away, and we found all the nests, which were composed 

 of sticks and lined with seaweed, had either eggs or young in ; 

 three seemed a full clutch. The young had not got much down 

 to boast of, and had a shining black skin, like so many little 

 negroes. The nests were built on the bare granite rock, at 

 varying distances apart. The whole place was white with excreta, 

 and a decidedly fishy perfume pervaded the locality. Most of the 

 eggs were hard-set. We have since been blamed for not 

 destroying all the eggs and young, as Cormorants are so 

 destructive to fish. Well, in the first place, we did not care about 

 destroying the young and eggs of birds which had given us so 

 much pleasure in watching them, and it certainly was a beautiful 

 sight as they stood in numbers on the grey rock with their gleam- 

 ing white breasts and black backs shining in the sun. Besides, 

 there are plenty of fish in the sea for all. We certainly took a 

 few eggs, but no young. A solitary Gannet had built her nest 

 among the Cormorants, and was sitting on her egg quite undis- 

 turbed by her neighbours. 



Among the tussocks of grass near the shore, and not far from 

 the Cormorants, a large colony of Silver Gulls were nesting. 

 They made their nests of dry grass, well hidden among the 

 tussocks, but they had only just commenced to lay. I had found 

 a single nest before on Preservation Island with three eggs in, 

 situated in the shallow cleft of a granite rock, but it is not 

 often that a pair of these birds will nest by themselves. They 

 much prefer to do so in company. Several of the flocks we came 

 across had not commenced nesting. Near the Gulls were a 

 colony of Bass Straits Tern, Sterni hergii, and they circled screech- 

 ing over our heads, but they had not commenced to lay. 



Both the Hooded {jEgialitis cucullatus) and Red-capped 

 [J^. ruficapilla) Dottrels were noticed on the beaches of the 

 various islands, and three nests with three eggs in each were 

 found of the former, if nests they can be called, as they 

 are simply shallow depressions scraped in the sand, with a 

 few pieces of broken shell about them, and well above high- 

 water mark, and in preference on the ridge of a sand 

 spit, where a certain amount of seaweed gets blown up and 

 more or less covered with fine sand. It is easy to pass by 



