^°'*^m^^^'] JjEach, The Birds of Victoria. 147 



of the pier. The local residents are proud of them, and do not 

 interfere with them. Terns retire to lonely islands, too, to 

 breed. The famous Sooty Tern is found in all warm seas. It 

 is the " egg bird " of sailors. Small vessels go out from Cuba 

 and return with a cargo of eggs, which have to be sold off 

 quickly ; so they are sold by the gallon, as there is no time to 

 count them out. The skuas which follow the Bay steamers to 

 Queenscliff each day in summer are identical with the skuas 

 that are to be found on the English coast. 



In order ten — Charadriformes — come the wading birds,, 

 found about lagoons, shores, &c. They are of considerable 

 interest, as they are wanderers. Nine of the Victorian birds 

 are also found in England, and no less than seventeen of the 

 thirty-five Victorian members of this group are really Siberian 

 or Northern birds. When a bird migrates, it is the rule that 

 it breeds in the colder of the two countries it lives in ; so that 

 these seventeen birds breed in Siberia, Japan, and Northern 

 Asia, and then visit Victoria each season when it is too cold 

 there. Think of the journey twice a year ! Six of them even 

 visit New Zealand. How do they find their way there, across 

 a gap of over 1,000 miles, without any land whatever ? In- 

 herited memory is strong, but how did the first batches find 

 their way ? Their annual journey supports the geographer 

 in his idea that Australia at no very distant date extended very 

 much further to the east. Indeed, these birds almost certainlv 

 follow the old eastern coast of the Australian continent. 



Snipe, some plovers, dottrels, curlews (sea), whimbrels, god- 

 wits, &c., thus go north each year to partake of the abundant 

 banquet of fruits, &c., preserved in the great ice chamber of the 

 north. Numberless flocks of birds follow up the melting ice, 

 and so nest unmolested on the great tundras and plains of 

 Siberia. They wear their bright wedding dress in the far north 

 and are known here only in the quiet mottled browns and greys. 

 Soon now these birds will depart. They travel mostly at night, 

 to avoid hawks, &c., and so are seldom seen, though they may 

 be heard calling as they pass high overhead. 



Our inland curlew has a call very similar to that of the sea 

 (true) curlew, but it has a short, straight bill instead of a long, 

 arched bill. The proper name of the land curlew is the Southern 

 Stone-Curlew. It is the onlyj Victorian bird that seems to have 

 the power of varying the colour of its eggs. If it lays in grass 

 the eggs are greenish ; if amongst ironstone, the eggs are reddish- 

 brown ; if on sand, the eggs are tawny, and so on. Other 

 ground-laying birds seem to pick out the soil that matches the 

 colour of their eggs, and lay there only. While the Snipe breeds 

 in Japan, the Painted Snipe breeds in Victoria. 



Our noble Bustard, or " Wild Turkey," comes in this group. 



