154 
POPULAR HISTOUY OF BIRDS. 
A pretty little finch [Amadina castanotus), belonging to 
tlie same genus with the last^ frequently cheers the traveller 
through the desert parts of Australia, It is a gregarious 
species^ and is met with in hundreds on bushes at no great, 
distance from water, to which they regularly fly at sunset. 
Captain Sturt, the intrepid Australian discoverer, in his 
narrative speaks of this bird : — Never did its note fall on 
our ears there but as the harbinger of good, for never did 
we hear this little bird but we were sure to find water nigh 
at hand, and many a time has it raised my drooping spirits 
and those of my companions, when in almost hopeless search 
for that, to us, invaluable element"^.''^ 
Captain Parry found the Snow-bunting {Plectrophanes ni- 
valis), during the spring of 1825, one of the first visitants 
to the neighbourhood of Port Bowen, where, with the crews 
of the Hecla and Pury, he had spent a monotonous winter, 
occasionally relieved by the appearance of a pair of ravens, 
the only winter resident of the order of birds. He refers, 
evidently with pleasure, to the snow-bunting^s sprightly 
notef. Another Arctic voyager. Captain Lyon, who at- 
tempted, in H.M.S. Griper, to reach Repulse Bay in 1824, 
* Expedition into Central Australia, m 1844, 1845, 1846, vol. ii. app. p. 27. 
t Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-west Passage, p. 81. 
