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An Old Australian Bird-lover,



we caught the parents. The pleasure of possessing these rare

and pretty birds — I have only seen one other pair—was short¬

lived. The hen broke her leg on the way home and died ; the

cock-bird strangled himself a week later between the wires of his cage.

The Laughing Jackass, on account of its laudable reputation for

killing snakes, is a protected bird. I know the Australian bush well,

and have seen and watched hundreds of these birds, hut personally

have never seen one yet kill a snake. I noticed them swoop down,

catch up a little frilly lizard, rise up, drop it and catch it again,

probably to kill it before settling on a branch to pound the little

reptile tender. But, like the famous Butcher-birds—the worry of

my aviaries— they steal the broods of other birds out of the nest; for

chickens they have developed a special taste. A Peewit having built

on one of the tall gum-trees in my paddock, had been watched by us

feeding its young for days—in fact, I intended to have them later

on; but a Jackass thought it had a prior right, and we noticed it

helping itself to one first under the most vociferous protestations

of the parent Peewits ; later on it fetched the other oneA Another

time, sitting under a tree, a Wood Swallow floated to the ground not

far away. Picking it up, we took it home, but it died in spite of all

our care and attention. Its trouble was being egg-bound. Even in

freedom I am sure epidemics occur amongst birds which must carry

off many a one. I picked up one of our brightly-coloured native

birds one day and brought it home, foolishly placing it in my soft-bill

aviary. This act cost me every bird I had in that flight. I could

only ascertain that the cause of death had been intestinal. A doctor

friend, to whom I showed a bird once on account of its blindness,

diagnosed it as a cataract. But there are instances brighter than

those just related. Thus I had a Borneo Partridge which chose as a



* [By “Peewit” our correspondent probably means the Peewee or Pied Grallina

(Grallina picata). This handsome black and white species is also known as

the “ Magpie Lark ”: it is as useful as it is handsome, for it destroys numbers

of land molluscs — intermediate hosts of liver-fluke. A clutch of three eggs

now before us recall in size and shape those of the English Missel Thrush,

in colour they are of a beautiful flesh-pink hue, blotched with reddish brown

and purplish grey. The clutch was taken in the mountains of Victoria on

November 18th, 1904, from a mud nest lined with feathers like that of a

thrush. — G. R.]



