AFFECTION OF COCKATIEL 215 



meat, which they seek eagerly, and in confinement will 

 take in preference to any other kind of food. The bird 

 goes in flocks of considerable size in districts where it has 

 not been persecuted. I have seen perhaps four or five 

 hundred together ; but when feeding, the flocks scatter 

 very much, as all the ground - feeding Australian 

 parrots do. 



Among birds which it may interest naturalists to know 

 were found in the districts between King George's Sound 

 and the Gascoyne River, but which can only be incidentally 

 noticed, was a species of Meliphagus, not specifically deter- 

 mined, which was remarkable for feeding on beetles and 

 other insects, as well as on the food to which its genus is 

 supposed to be confined 



On a point of land near the entrance to Shark Bay, I 

 saw a small flock of painted snipe {Rhynchus australis)^ 

 three of which I shot. This bird has been obtained near 

 Fremantle and at other places northward along the 

 coast ; but it is not abundant in those localities. On the 

 Gascoyne I found a nest of this species, with four young 

 ones in it ; but though I watched long and carefully, I did 

 not get a sight of the old birds, and in the settled colonies 

 I could obtain no information about this snipe, which 

 seems to be almost unknown to the colonists. 



Curlews, plovers, and allied genera of many different 

 species, are numerous along the entire coast of Australia, 

 some being accidental visitors seldom seen, others 

 migrants, and a few rovers which are well known in 

 widely removed parts of the earth, the glossy ibis (Falcinellus 

 igneus), for example, which is not a rare bird in the 

 Champion Bay district. 



Plovers are very numerous, although they seldom or 

 never assemble in such immense flocks as their European 

 allies seem to do. They are generally found in small 

 flights of forty to seventy birds ; sometimes a few hundreds 

 are seen together. On the other side of the continent, in 

 some of the great marshes, I have seen much larger flocks 

 of the same species that are common here ; but yet I think 

 that European plovers are more gregarious than Australian. 



