LITTLE CRAKE 
23 
rushes on to the bullock-hide, and then run quickly 
to and fro searching for the insects on which they 
feed. Doubtless it is in these clumps of sedge that 
the Little Crake breeds in the spring, their nesting 
habits being similar to those of the last-described 
species. 
I have only known two instances of the finding of 
eggs near Geelong. Colonel Garrard knew of an 
egg taken at Connewarre Lakes in the seventies, and 
another nest with a clutch of four was found in the 
Queen's Park shortly after the great flood of 188 1. 
The eggs of this species, being of an almost uniform 
dark brownish-olive, are much easier to tell from the 
Spotted Crake's than one bird is from the other. 
TABUAN OR SPOTLESS CRAKE 
Porzanoidea plumbea immaculata 
Though its unrelieved plumage of brown above and 
grey below renders the Spotless or Tabuan Crake 
easy to distinguish from its relatives when seen at 
close quarters, it is so rare a bird that few local bird- 
observers have met with it afield. Once only did 
such good fortune (for to the lover of birds the sight 
of a rare bird is the most delightful of happenings) 
fall to my lot. In that strange isolated patch of 
granite and gabbro which we know as the Dog Rocks 
there lies, on top of the main hill, a wide grassy 
valley, on whose sides the growth of redgums attests 
