120 



THE OOLOGIST. 



ton-birds. A little later conversation 

 upon any subject would have been 

 out of the question, for black wings 

 whistled around us in the black night, 

 the air was dense with the musky 

 odor of seabirds, and all the uncanny 

 noises of earth seemed to be gurgling 

 and shrieking under foot, over one's 

 head and round about us in the 

 strange voices of these strange sea- 

 birds. It was while waiting that I 

 asked my companion, Mr. A. J. Camp- 

 bell, how he first got that taste for na- 

 ture study which he has made the 

 life work of his leisure hours, and 

 which is so splendidly recorded in his 

 two illustrated volumes, "The Nests 

 and Eggs of Australian Birds." What 

 I can remember of that chat long ago 

 can only be a memory interview. 



"I became interested in the subject," 

 he said, "when I was a boy about 

 eight years old on the Werribee Plains, 

 and the first nests that interested me 

 were those of the black and white fan- 

 tail, the red-browed finches— which 

 built in an old hedge— and quails, 

 which were then very plentiful. My 

 grandfather was a strict old Highland- 

 er, who thought the taking of eggs a 

 sin, so I kept my collection hidden in 

 a stone wall, and by mischance left it 

 there when we came away. My moth- 

 er encouraged me in the study of all 

 forms of nature. The first puzzle I 

 met as a boy was finding the brown 

 egg of the bronze cuckoo amongst the 

 white eggs in the nest of a yellow-tail- 

 ed tit, the second, equally a surprise 

 and a delight, occurred years after- 

 wards, when I climbed a gum sapling 

 on the River Darling, and found the 

 curiously marked egg of the bower 

 bird, which looks as if it were wound 

 round about with brown cobweb. As 

 a schoolboy in Melbourne, I spent all 

 my spare time nest-hunting in what 

 was then a happy hunting ground of 

 birds— the line of shore and bush 

 stretching from Sandridge past the 



Red Bluff at St. Kilda. The oldest 

 egg in my collection— that of the yel- 

 low-breasted shrike-tit— was taken in 

 those days in Albert park, and the 

 lovely swinging nest, with that pe- 

 culiar bulge at the sides, which pre- 

 vents the eggs being rolled out of it in 

 a high wind, looked as beautiful to 

 me then as now. It was only on get- 

 ting hold of Gould's 'Handbook' that 

 I realized little or nothing had been 

 done on the domestic side of bird life, 

 so I took that up, both as a hobby 

 and a scientific work." 



What do you consider your most in- 

 teresting trip? 



"That to West Australia in 1899, 

 when Sir James Patterson, then Com- 

 missioner of Customs, gave me fur- 

 lough for the purpose. There were 

 certain unknown eggs and nests 

 which I required to complete the ma- 

 terial for my book, and I gut them all, 

 with the exception of the western 

 scrub bird, which has not yet been 

 discovered. That is strange, because 

 the conspicuous call of the bird is so 

 often heard. Still more curious is 

 the fact that no collector has ever 

 found a female scrub bird. One of 

 the birds I was anxious to get was the 

 pied robin, and calling at a sawmill I 

 found the bird and its nest close be- 

 side it. The discovery was interest- 

 ing, because instead of the apple- 

 green eggs expected they were more 

 like those of a wood swallow, and the 

 generic name of the bird was altered 

 in consequence." 



What is the finest bird sight you 

 have seen? 



"The most impressive was the first 

 sight of the sea-bird rookeries on the 

 islands of Bass Straits, which were 

 then unknown. I remember landing 

 one morning on one of the Flinders 

 group after a storm so heavy that we 

 feared we could not attempt it, and we 

 dressed lightly, lest we should capsize 

 and have to swim for it. We walked 



