SEA BIRDS. 91 



mob of five in such a place, and I nailed three at a double 

 shot ; and well I recollect bringing them home on my 

 back at night, about six miles, with five couple of black 

 ducks and thirteen pigeons. An old bird will stand over 

 five feet high, and weigh upwards of twenty pounds. I 

 once found the nest in a swamp near us : it was built 

 high, of dry rushes, like that of the swan, and in it 

 were two large eggs, mottled with red, especially at the 

 large end. I once caught a half-grown young one, which 

 I kept at my tent a long time. It was a voracious 

 feeder, and lived principally on boiled rice. 



There are very few sea birds on these coasts. From 

 Mordialloc down to Frankstone, on Port-Phillip Bay, the 

 beach is low and sandy for eleven miles, and beyond this 

 to the Heads it is high and rocky. The shores of "Western- 

 port Bay are principally mud-flats, fringed with mangrove 

 scrub ; and on the "Williamstown side, as far as Gelong, 

 the coast is low, edged with banks of seaweed, washed in 

 by the tide, and also fringed with the mangrove. On these 

 flats the ducks, waders, and pelicans feed at low water, 

 and two or three species of gull and tern, curlews, 

 avocet, and large flocks of stints, are met with up and 

 down the whole beach. But to the coast-shooter neither 

 of these bays offers much attraction. Further out 

 towards the Heads, the coast is less disturbed, and bluff 

 headlands of ironstone rock afford a wilder and safer 

 home for the sea-fowl ; and facing the wide ocean many 

 other and rarer species are probably met with than in our 

 land-locked bays. 



