Bee-leejfing in Vlrioria. 97 



it, with all its faults, much more valuable than many people think. 

 I have seen the holes in which the young are reared strewed with the 

 remains of beetles, plant bugs, moths, &c., and but very few bees; but 

 these latter the parent birds may dissect before feeding their young. 

 The bee eater is one of the most beautiful of our indigenous birds, and, 

 when on the wing, has somewhat the flight of our well-known and much- 

 esteemed wood swallows or summer birds. 



The Wood Swallow (Artamus personatus). 

 "Wood swallows, of which there are several species, are much more 

 numerous than bee eaters, and although each wood swallow will, per- 

 haps, eat less bees and more other insects than a bee eater, the aggregate 

 damage done to the beekeeper by wood swallows is much greater than 

 that done by bee eaters. On cool days, when few other insects than 

 bees are about, hundreds of wood swallows will sometimes keep in the 

 vicinity of an aj)iary for days catching the bees which come out for 

 water, and thus deplete the colonies of adult bees at a time when they 

 can ill be spared. These birds, after catching a bee, alight somewhere 

 and break the bee in two, the abdomen, with the sting, being discarded. 

 On this account a much greater number of bees is required to feed the 

 bird, and the absence of the abdomen of the bee, with its distinguishing 

 coloured rings, in the craw of birds shot and dissected, has led 

 superficial observers to the belief that these birds do not eat bees. 



Mr. C French, in the Journal of Agriculture for May, 1902, says 

 of the Masked Wood Swallow, the species illustrated herewith : The 

 male of this species has, according to Gould, the face, ear coverts, and 

 throat jet black, bounded with a narrow line of white, crown of the 

 head sooty black, gradually passing into the deep grey which covers 

 the whole of the upper surface, wings and tail, the latter tipped with 

 white ; all the under surface very delicate grey, thighs dark grey ; iridis 

 blackish brown ; bill bluish at base, becoming black at the tip ; legs and 

 feet bluish grey. The female differs principally in having the colouring 

 of the bill and the black mark on the face much paler. 



The nests of the wood swallow are frail, and somewhat carelessly 

 built of small twigs and fibre, and in the case of the Masked "Wood 

 Swallow half-dried grass is often used as a lining. The nest is built 

 mostly in low trees and bushes, and contains two to three eggs. 



There is a number of other birds which eat a few bees occasionally, 

 or take to it as a freak. In the first case the damage done is insignifi- 

 cant, while in the latter the killing of the one or more individual birds 

 will supply the remedy. 



Ducks. 



Ducks and bees are mutually destructive; that, at least, is the writer's 

 experience. Adult ducks, when once they take to eating bees, cannot 

 be cured of the habit. In the case of young ducklings the evil supplies 

 its own remedy, for, sooner or later, a sting will lodge somewhere in 

 the bird's anatomy, and cause what an uninitiated onlooker would take 

 to be a fatal fit. Adult ducks do not seem to be affected in any way, 



770.— D 



