SOME PERCHING BIRDS 



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the pair of eggs, these being enclosed in tough, flexible, white shells, and containing 

 proportionately large yolks. How long these eggs are in hatching has not yet 

 been ascertained ; but the newly hatched young are known to be quite blind and 

 naked, and furnished with soft, fleshy margins to their mouths, admirably adapted 

 to receive the milk as it oozes from the breast of the female parent, or to suck it 

 up as it floats on the surface of the water, on to which it is ejected when the 

 young ones are old enough to follow their parents into the streams. 

 Some Perching Australia, it has been remarked, is noticeable on account of the 



Birds. extraordinary and apparently unique richness of its bird fauna, for 

 not only has the country its own peculiar types of interesting birds, such as emeus. 



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B^B 





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mallee-birds, the black swan, laughing jackass, cockatoos, many parrots, 1 yre-birds, 

 bower-birds, etc. (some of these being common to New Guinea), but it contains 

 representatives of nearly every widely spread family of birds with the exception 

 of vultures and woodpeckers. Nevertheless, in spite of this numerical richness, 

 the birds of Australia are far less peculiar and characteristic than its mammals, 

 although they include a considerable number worthy of special mention. To 

 select those best worthy of such notice, more especially in the case of the perching 

 and picarian groups, is however a matter of no little difficulty. Many Australian 

 birds, it may be observed, are migratory, and it has been stated that no fewer than 

 forty-eight species visit Siberia, although three of these are only occasional 

 stragglers to the far north. Of these some ten or eleven breed not only in 

 Siberia, but likewise, although perhaps in slightly different forms, in Australia. 



In the perching or passerine group mention may be made of the pie-lark 

 (Grallina picata), which, like the Indian, Chinese, and Papuan members of the 



