50



On his Visit io Australia.



made me very anxious to ascertain exactly as to what constituted

the chief food of these birds in a wild state. I therefore shot a

specimen the following day and opened its crop, which contained

one mass of large whitish grubs, and nothing besides. These

grubs live under the bark of dead or dying Eucalyptus trees,

those that have been killed by ring-barking showing, as a rule,

clear evidence of the work of the Black Cockatoos, the bark being

torn off in strips.


The very handsome Yellow-collared or “Twenty-eight”

Parrakeet (Barnardius semitorquat 7 is') was constantly i 11 evidence,

and at times the call-note, sounding like “ twenty-eight ” was

frequently uttered. Most of those I saw were in pairs, and on

two occasions I saw the cocks showing off to, by slightly droop¬

ing the wings and spreading the tail, and feeding their mates.


As we walked across some swampy ground, thickly covered

with wattle-scrub, through which the tracks of Wallabies ran in

every direction, we flushed a pair of Brush Bronze-wing Pigeons

(Phaps elega?is) from almost under our feet; they flew with low

rapid flight and were soon lost to sight in the forest beyond.


A large grey Friar Bird or Leather-head was next seen,

perched on a leafless bough, but it did not allow of very close

approach.


A family party of White-browed Wood-Swallows ( Artanms

superciliosus) interested me very much. The country where we

found them was fairly open, the ground covered with low scrub,

and here and there medium-sized trees. The old birds were

constantly taking short flights after insects with which they re¬

turned to the branches of one of these trees and fed the chicks.

The flight of these birds is very graceful and pretty.



(To be continued).



