Vol. X. 



lyio 



] Macgillivrav, The Region of the Barrier Range. 21 



we made a start on the road again. The trap having to make 

 a detour, crossing and recrossing the creek, in order to pick up 

 the Gardiner's Creek track, M'Lennan and I cut across to it by 

 a more direct route through the salt-bush, to look up the White- 

 winged Wrens. Nearly every crab-hole, with its surrounding 

 blue-bushes, was in possession of a family of these little birds. 

 The tiny grey females, as they fly and skip along the ground 

 from bush to bush, look almost like mice, and are in marked 

 contrast to the fussy little male, resplendent in coat of dark 

 blue and silver, as he shows himself occasionally on the top of a 

 bush with a great pretence of guarding the line of retreat 

 Only the woolly outlines of several nests were found by us, and 

 we soon joined the main party. Our objective now was a well 

 on Gardiner's Creek, 20 miles in a W.N.W. direction. The 

 country was at first hilly, thinly timbered with mulga {Acacia 

 mieura) and turpentine-bush and patches of blue-bush. The 

 herbage was good, and wild flowers were plentiful. The 

 rumbling of our trap frequently disturbed Orange-fronted 

 Chats {Ephtht'anura aiirifrons) and Tricoloured Chats {E. 

 tricolor) from the bushes. They flew along the road in front of 

 us from bush to bush, and then circled out and let us pass on to 

 put up others in the same way. A Spotted Harrier {Circus 

 assimilis) was beating the ground parallel with, but not too near, 

 our track, on the look-out for prey ; its widely-stretched grey 

 wings, with their black tips, made it easily recognizable. 



The strident note of the Brown Song-Lark {Cinclorhamphus 

 cruralis) was heard ever and anon, and the male bird was seen, 

 as he descended and perched on the top of a bush, with uplifted 

 tail, to utter a warning " Wez-weet " to his wary mate. There are 

 many flowering shrubs on these hills, which furnish a generous 

 diet to the smaller insectivorous birds, notably Eremophila 

 alternifolia and E. duttoni. When about 5 miles from our 

 destination the trap met with an accident, and the breakage 

 took some time to fix up. After proceeding carefully for a few 

 hundred yards on a rough road the trap gave way again, and we 

 had to leave it. Packing the horses with bedding and food, we 

 tramped in single file to the well, which we found just after 

 dark. A fire was soon lit and the billy on the boil. Daylight 

 revealed the fact that about two tons of dead rabbits had not 

 long before been cleaned out of the receiving tank from which 

 we drew our water. Before breakfast next morning the two 

 boys and myself took the billy down the creek to look for a 

 soak in the sand, and were lucky enough to find a small pool of 

 good water about half a mile from our camp. The feed on the 

 creek flats around the camp was very luxuriant, but, despite 

 this and the fact that they were hobbled, three of our horses had 

 strayed away. After breakfast one of our number saddled the 

 remaining horse and went in search of the others. The rest of 



