80



R. T. Littlejohns ancl S. A. Lawrence,



visitors only. Some years also they appear in greater numbers than

in others. They usually arrive in the month of November, and

journey north again soon after rearing their broods. The species

under review is gregarious, always travelling and hunting in flocks.

At nesting-time even the flock does not break up entirely, although

the nests are built far enough apart to ensure each nesting pair a

distinct territory of its own.


It is quite evident that a colony of birds will return to the

same locality to nest year after year. On this account the writers,

who have a very soft spot for these graceful birds, make it an annual

practice, no matter what other urgent business is afoot, to pay at least

one visit to a picturesque little spot known between them as the

“ Wood Swallow Paddock.” It is a grassy paddock intersected by

two small gullies forming a Y> and covered with a six-foot growth

of native and introduced bushes—very quiet and undisturbed not¬

withstanding the fact that the heart of the city is only twelve miles

away by rail. The white skeletons of ring-barked gum-trees dotted at

intervals complete a picture evidently as attractive to the birds as

to ourselves. Here, in the area of five or six acres, one is sure to

find, a few weeks before Christmas, upwards of a dozen families busy

with their nestlings. The anxiety we feel each year as to wdiether

the birds have chosen other pastures is dispelled by the notes of

alarm as the paddock is reached. The location of the several nests

is always an easy matter. As previously mentioned, each pair of

birds jealously guards a fixed area surrounding its own nest. In

every case this area contains a dead tree, and from the bare limbs of

this point of vantage attacks are made on the intruder the moment

he crosses the invisible frontier. The nearer to the nest the greater

becomes the fury of the attack, an unfailing “ hot or cold ” tell-tale

soon pointing out the conspicuous nest. So dearly do the birds hold

to their theory of a look-out and a surrounding allotment that not

one case has been noted in this particular colony wdiere a nest was

not associated with a dead tree. Further, each pair minds its own

business and leaves the intruder wdrolly to the fury of the next family

as soon as he passes out of their own domain. We have never,

except when experimenting as described later, been attacked by more

than one pair of birds at one time. Should a Wood Swallow trespass.



