June,"| o'Donohue, Wanderings on the Murray Flood-Plain. 27 



or where a fence entered it, or a dry stem of a fallen bush of 

 the introduced tobacco afforded a dry resting-place, were 

 besieged, particularly in the early morning and towards sun- 

 down, by flocks of the Crested, Ocyphaps lophotes, and Bronze- 

 winged Pigeons, Phaps chalcoptera, and numerous other birds, 

 among which Barnard's, Bamardius barnardi, the Black-tailed, 

 Polytelis melanura, and the Yellow-rumped, Platycercus 

 flaveolus, Parrakeets were the most conspicuous. Small parties 

 of Grallinas, Grallina picata, and White-winged Choughs, 

 Corcorax melanorhamphus, were to be noted here and there, 

 as well as the White, Ibis molucca, and Straw-necked Ibis, 

 Carphibis spinicollis. For the most part the birds on the lake 

 and beside its margin foraged in silence, but from the lake's 

 selvedge of Red Gum and box timber a continuous clamour 

 arose. In the hollow spouts of these trees Cockatoos, Parrots, 

 Swallows, and Pardalotes were nesting, and amid their branches 

 the Minahs, Pigeons, Wood-Swallows, Grallinas, Choughs, &c, 

 were either building or incubating their eggs. 



The peaceful conditions outlined did not always prevail. 

 There was a time when the canoe-shaped boat that rested on 

 the mud of the southern shore glided out into the lake's broad 

 expanse under the impetus imparted by a pair of stout arms. 

 Hither and thither it progressed, working the duck to a common 

 centre, till all were congregated in a limited area. It was then 

 the punt gun in the bow belched forth its heavy charge into 

 the midst of the bewildered and suspicious birds, leaving them 

 dead and dying on the surface of the water, and waking in a 

 calm evening the echoes of the lake's surroundings for a radius, 

 so we were informed, of ten miles. Seventy-two brace of birds 

 is alleged to have been secured after a single discharge into a 

 flock of wild-fowl on this lake. The extreme shyness of the 

 water-fowl, particularly the Hoary-headed Grebe, which may 

 be counted in scores, and which, on one coming within three 

 hundred yards of the shore near where they happen to be, will 

 immediately take wing to the centre of the lake, is sufficient 

 ground on which to base the assumption that illegal shooting 

 is consistently practised. 



One can conjure up the daily scenes enacted in the now 

 distant past, when the dark-skinned natives lined the shores 

 of Mournpoul and the adjacent lakes ; when the lubras and 

 children waded in the shallows for mussels, or searched the 

 lignum bushes for the eggs of the wild-fowl, or the sandy shore 

 for those of the river tortoise ; when the lake was dotted with 

 their frail bark canoes and the smoke of the camp-fires arose 

 through the trees, and troops of piccaninnies and dogs sported 

 on the sand-dunes. Now all is changed. The natives have 

 passed away, leaving little to the casual observer to indicate 



