SOME USEFUL AUSTRALIAN BIRDS. 65 



toria the sportsmen used to call them Pick-axe Geese, on account of their 

 curiously shaped beak, and also from their somewhat harsh croak or honk, 

 which is like the call of the wild geese when crossing the plains, flying high 

 up in the sky and strung out in a wide V-shaped formation. Latham, who 

 was the first naturalist to describe the bird, called it the New Holland Ibis ; 

 later on Jamieson gave it the name of Ibis spinicollis, but Grey placed it in 

 the genus Geronticus ; this Gould adopted in his large folio work, but he 

 changed it to the genus Carphibis in his " Birds of Australia." Though 

 some modern writers retained the generic name Geronticus, later naturalists 

 dealing with our birds followed Gould, and it is now fixed in the genus 

 Carphibis. 



The Straw-necked Ibis is one of the best known and most popular of 

 Australian birds, and if the farmers and squatters do not look upon it as 

 sacred, in a similar way to the ancient Egyptians, they value it as one of their 

 most important insectivorous birds. No one in a country district would think 

 of shooting an ibis. It is not, generally speaking, a coastal visitant, but is 

 found all over the inland country, being a frequenter in the winter months 

 of the shores of inland lakes, marshes, and swampy country, where it finds 

 large food supplies in the freshwater crustaceans, insects, and frogs. In the 

 early summer months these birds congregate in enormous flocks for the pur- 

 pose of nesting in the reed beds and swamps of the Lachlan River and other 

 parts of the Riverina country. Le Souef estimated that in a swamp of about 

 400 acres in extent, which his party visited in the nesting season in southern 

 Riverina, there were fully 100,000 ibis in possession. There is hardly any 

 attempt at nest-making ; the nest is simply a handful of rushes, flags, or grass, 

 scratched together on the top of the trampled-down vegetation. In the centre 

 of this is placed usually three, but sometimes four, pale greenish-white eggs. 

 In these swamps the nests are almost touching, and the whole surface of the 

 reed-beds is one sheet of eggs like a seagulls' rookery. As the young birds 

 grow up, but are unable to fly, they are shepherded together by some of the 

 old birds on the trampled-down lignum and reeds so that they cannot get into 

 the surrounding water, where, if unwatched, many of them would be drowned. 



With the advent of the cutworm plagues in the grass paddocks, and the 

 hatching-out of the swarms of baby grasshoppers later on in the season, the 

 ibis flocks, freed from their domestic duties, scatter all over the plains, forest,, 

 and scrub. Broken up into small flocks of from fifty to several hundred, they 

 may be seen strutting or walking about in a very leisurely manner feeding 

 upon these pests, or, later in the day, when fully fed, resting upon dead tree* 

 or sleeping on fallen logs, where they are so little disturbed by man that they 

 take very little notice of anyone passing along the road. 



By reason of its large size, its fondness for some of our very worst insect 

 pests (grasshoppers and cutworms), and its numbers, the ibis is one of the 

 most valuable insectivorous birds in Australia, and not only should the birds- 

 be protected, but their nesting grounds should be proclaimed sanctuaries, and 

 no shooting allowed in these areas, 

 t 976 15 C 



