ii6 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



blacks did not seem to decrease the numbers. But since 

 the advent of the white man, with his nerve-shattering gun, 

 a remarkable diminution has been observed in some 

 localities. No doubt it could be successfully maintained 

 that the gun is responsible for an insignificant toll com- 

 pared with that taken by the blacks of the past. But the 

 birds were then deprived of their nestlings and eggs quietly, 

 if remorselessly, while the noise of the gun is more de- 

 moralising to the species as a whole than the numbers 

 actually killed. 



Nutmeg pigeons are frequently shot by the hundred as 

 they reach their nesting-place and mass themselves on the 

 trees. Some of their nurseries lie far away from the usual 

 tracks of the sportsman. Yet a single expedition during 

 the breeding season to one of the islands may cause 

 immense destruction and unprofitable loss of life. Though 

 in lessening numbers they venture much further along the 

 coast to the south, they keep well within the tropical zone. 

 The most favoured resorts within many miles are the 

 Barnard Islands, 14 miles to the north of Dunk Island. 

 The whole of the tribes, therefore, though scattered for 

 feeding over an immense area of the coast congregate on 

 four or five islands — miles apart — to rest and breed. The 

 assemblages are indeed prodigious ; but they represent the 

 gathering together of clans which have a very wide dis- 

 persal. Crowded together the host appears innumerable, 

 but on the mainland during the day (when only the hen 

 birds stay at home) the pigeons seem scarce. An occa- 

 sional group may be met with, and they may be heard 

 fluttering and flapping on the tree-tops (they are generally 

 silent when feeding), but they are too thinly distributed to 

 afford sport. Any other species of native bird which took 

 to gregarious habits might seem as numerous as this. If 

 all the sulphur-crested cockatoos, scrub turkeys, and scrub 

 fowls scattered over an area of the mainland corresponding 

 in extent with the feeding-ground of the nutmeg pigeons 

 were massed each night in four or five communities, the 

 numbers would seem startling ; but because the poor pigeon, 



