322 PARROQUETS. 



in numbers, feeding upon the ripe cones of the 

 Banksia, or honeysuckles ; "* and the smaller chat- 

 tering parroquets were flying about, in hundreds, 

 and revelling among the Eucalypti trees, which 

 were now in flower ; and, like to the humming- 

 birds, they were extracting honey from the nec- 

 taries of the blossoms. On examining one that 

 had Jjeen shot, the beak was covered, and the 

 mouth filled, with honey, possessing the peculiar 

 camphorated smell of the leaves and flowers of 

 the tree, mingled with stamina ; the stomach was 

 filled with a dark, thick honey, among which 

 some quantity of the stamina of the Eucalyptic 

 flowers were mingled. The Blue Mountain 

 parrot also sips the nectar from the flowers, as 

 well as from peaches, &c. The natives, when 

 they kill any of these birds, suck their beaks to 

 extract the honey with which the mouth is usu- 

 ally filled, and also recover that collected in the 

 stomach. 



The aborigines were now collecting about the 

 farms in expectation of a feast at the ensuing 

 Christmas festival. I went up to one who was 

 busily engaged in making an opossum-skin cloak : 

 ne sewed the skins together with the fibres of the 



* Called honeysuckle by the colonists, because the flowers 

 secrete a quantity of honey, which is attractive to the natives, 

 and the numerous parroquets, when the trees are in bloom. 



