54 A BUSH CALENDAR 



It is a little trick to which most mother birds have recourse 

 in the spring. The idea is that their apparent helplessness 

 will tempt yon to catch them, and so leave their babies un- 

 molested. It is the natural mother instinct to protect its young 

 at any cost ; but unfortunately for the little birds, this very 

 trick of the mother often attracts people's attention to their 

 existence, instead of drawing them away. But I let the fond 

 mother think she had deluded me, and went on my way. The 

 cicadas were in full chorus by this time, floury bakers, double 

 drummers, and the rest of them, and their song was almost 

 deafening. But I managed to detect above their clamour the 

 whispering note of the Lambert's blue wren him with the 

 chestnut shoulders on his blue and black coat. I stood patient- 

 ly for ten minutes before I was rewarded by the sight of him 

 flying up with a tiny fly in his bill, which was welcomed by a 

 chorus of squeaks from a grey spider-flower bush. There I 

 saw three of the very quaintest of all young birds, three tiny 

 brown balls, no bigger than half my thumb, and each with a 

 tiny tail standing straight up in ridiculous imitation of its 

 parent. 



The last family of baby birds I found was right up on the 

 sandstone heights, where, in a stunted banksia, lay three half- 

 fledged babies of the fulvous-fronted honey-eater. Three is 

 an unusual number for a honey-eater's family, two being the 

 regulation limit; but these three little brothers did not seem 

 to mind being slightly crowded, and very happy they looked 



