August, 1908.] THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 67 



Cormorant was seen, and as we approached more closely the 

 more adult young birds began to fall out of their nests, being 

 evidently stimulated by fright, for none of them were seen to fly 

 off the nest, and as a rule they fell into the water unceremoniously 

 on their breasts. Not far away two nests of the White Ibis were 

 seen in an unusual situation, on the top of the stump of a fallen 

 tree. 



For the last day of our holiday it was planned to make final 

 visits to several nests we had mentally noted during our various 

 excursions and get photographs of them in their natural state, but 

 the fates were against us, for soon after starting rain commenced, 

 and increased in violence as we proceeded, so that we were 

 compelled to shelter for a time under some Murray pines on a 

 sandbank. Here we .found the tunnel of a pair of Bee-eaters, 

 Merops ornatus^ and so as to avoid having a day without some 

 result we set to work and sectioned the tunnel, at the further end 

 of which, in a slightly enlarged chamber, were six roundish 

 white eggs. We took our photo, under difliculties, for the rain 

 splashed in the sand continuously. These burrows have a 

 diameter of about 2 inches, and vary from 2 to 5 feet in 

 length. The bird lays its eggs on the sand, no linmg being 

 provided for the nesting chamber, and when entering its burrow 

 it backs into it. 



In these brief notes I have been able to mention only a few of 

 the more notable birds seen, and the wonderful variety of bird- 

 life abounding in this portion of Riverina may be gathered from 

 the fact that during our ten-days' excursion we noted no less than 

 125 species, but there were some others that we could not identify. 

 Within a radius of 50 miles from Mathoura the country supports 

 many millions of birds. The approximate number of Ibis 

 frequenting this area in a good season amounts to, perhaps, one 

 million. These birds destroy a large number of noxious pests 

 daily, such as grasshoppers and snails. The devastation caused 

 by grasshoppers is well known, whilst the snails act as the inter- 

 mediate host of the liver fluke, which cause such havoc amongst 

 our sheep. The quantity of these noxious pests which this 

 immense number of Ibis dispose of daily amounts to the 

 astonishing total of 2,200,000,000. Upon investigation the crop 

 of an adult bird yielded 2,200 insects, grasshoppers and snails 

 predominating. The vast amount of good these birds do can 

 therefore be gauged by these figures. 



The next day saw us returning to Melbourne, heavily laden 

 with the results of our ten-days' sojourn among the birds, but 

 after all I was not satisfied I had not obtained a picture of a 

 W^hite Egret feeding its young, so I again arranged for a short 

 flying visit during my Christmas holidays. The result of this trip 

 will also be found in the October Emu (vol. vii., 1907, p. 71) ; 

 suffice it to say that the sights that met my gaze as we approached 



