RED LORY 
1 8s 
from Lethbridge and Anakie, where the bush is of 
very much the same type. More open country they 
do not like, except as a winter resort. In many years 
I never found this species to nest anywhere between 
Geelong and Queenscliff. In that country and on 
the sparsely timbered plains the place of the Red 
Lory is taken by its near relative, the Rosella, which 
conversely avoids the remoter parts of the bush. 
By mid-September the winter's flocks have broken 
up, and you will see the courting pairs widespread 
through the Anglesea bushlands, the male resplendent, 
the female dull. It is a sombre forest enough that, 
at most seasons ; gnarled and stunted trees, dark 
grey trunks and dark green leaves, and the track a 
monotonous winding ribbon of white dust in summer 
and an unspeakable morass in a wet July. But, like 
every living thing under heaven, it has its Blutezeit, 
its singing-season. Is it not so, in the last week in 
September, when a dozen different orchids star the 
sparse-tufted sand with brown and mauve, and the 
whole tribe of leguminous plants bursts into bloom 
from stiff, spike-leaved yellow acacia to the modest 
ground-creeping scarlet-runner, and the carpet of 
heath pales alternately and blushes, and Honeyeaters 
are drunk with too much sweet from the myriad 
flowerlets that cluster on the brown rods of the 
grass-tree ? 
That is when the Lories have their spring-cleaning, 
tooting out all the debris of last year's nursery from 
the old hollow in some charred messmate stem. It 
