26 O'Donohue, Wanderings on the Murray Flood-Plain. [voLXXXii. 



WANDERINGS ON THE MURRAY FLOOD-PLAIN. 



By J. G. O'Donoghue. 



[Read before the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, 8th Feb., 1915.) 



(Continued from page 20.) 



At any hour of the day Mournpoul and its immediate vicinity 

 presented a varied and animated picture of bird-life. Close 

 in shore, wherever the eye elected to dwell, phalanxes of Black 

 Swan, Teal, Black Duck, and Hoary-headed Grebes, Podicipes 

 poliocephahis, were to be discerned floating lazily on the placid 

 water or feeding leisurely on the molluscs that abounded in 

 immense numbers amid the dense, irregular selvedge oi 

 Vallisneria, VaUisneria spiralis, Curly Pond Weed, Potamogeton 

 crispus, and Chara, sp. 



Further out companies of Pelicans, Pelecanus conspicittatus, 

 sailed aimlessly about, and seemed like miniature yachts 

 under a full spread of snow-white canvas, whilst overhead 

 Pacific Gulls, Gabianus pacificus, and Caspian Terns, 

 Hydroprogne caspia, wheeled in erratic evolutions, and a 

 pair of Ospreys, Pandion leucocephalus, regarded with anxious 

 eye by the smaller water-fowl beneath, circled on apparently 

 motionless wings. It was on the flat shores of the lake. 

 close beside its muddy margin, that the abundance and 

 variety of bird-life was most strikingly manifest. At 

 many points large companies of Cormorants, comprising 

 the Black, Pludacrocorax carbo, the White-breasted, P. gouldi, 

 the Pied, P. hypoleucus, and the Little Black, P. sulcirostris, 

 were to be seen sunning themselves. Flocks of Sharp-tailed 

 Stints, Hcteropygiu acuminata, Red-capped Dottrels. /Egialitis 

 ruficapilla, and White-headed Stilts. Himantopus leucocephalus, 

 foraged in company with numerous White Egrets, Herodias 

 timoriensis, Pacifi< Herons. Notophoyx pacifica, and! White- 

 fronted Herons, N. novce-hollandice. Troops of Emu, Dromaius 

 ■hollandice, some with young ones, stalked with majestii 

 motion among the depasturing sheep and cattle, and the Spur- 

 winged Plover, Ijlavanellus lobatus, ran hithei and thithei 

 amon oldin^ and bickering incessantly. 



Owing to the heat, and the great amounl <>i evaporation it 

 induced, the lake's area sensibly diminished day by daw As 

 the receding waters Laid bare the Vallisneria, and the foetid 

 mud upon which it flourished hardened beneath the sun's rays, 

 flocks oi the 1'ink, Cacatua leadbeateri, the Rose-breasted, I 

 roseicapilla, the White. ( galerita, and the Blood-stained, 

 ('. sanguinea, 1 ockatoo descended upon it like locusts on a 

 wheat-field, and, tearing it up by the roots, greedily devoured 

 the sui < ub nt poi tion. that still remained. 



Those parts ol the lake giving direel access to cleai water, 



