122 BIRDS OF THE DISTRICT OF GEELONG 
is veiy early, many eggs being found on Passage and 
Forsyth Islands, their headquarters, in the month 
of June. 
I met with them in large flocks on Preservation 
Island, on the west of Flinders Island, and there, 
too, found a nest built of a thick layer of grass and 
lined with down, placed among tussock grass growing 
in a high ledge of a sort of granite tor overlooking the 
sea. The goslings had just left it, and were running 
about close by. This was remarkably late, at the 
end, indeed, of November, and it may have been that 
the rest of the flock were but waiting for this tardy 
brood to develop enough strength of wing to take 
them across the Strait. Mr. F. S. Smith tells me 
that the Cape Barren Geese usually arrive in the 
Western District plains early in November, and leave 
again after the first cold autumn rains, about the end 
of March. 
Their fly-line lies over Cape Otway, but flocks 
have been seen coming in from the sea in the direction 
of Port Campbell. The area upon which they settle 
in Victoria is the plain country lying (roughly) south 
of a line drawn between Geelong, Ballarat, Hamilton, 
Terang, and Camperdown, and within this space they 
especially affect the sheep-country between Woorndoo 
and Lake Corangamite. On Nerrin Nerrin Mr. 
Smith has seen flocks of from sixty to seventy. Their 
food is the water-grass which grows in old water- 
courses. A curious habit of this Goose is that of 
sleeping all night standing on one leg, after wading 
