MINAH OR GARRULOUS HONEYEATER 351 
rounded wings work hard all the time ; it is one of 
the most ungraceful of the Honeyeaters in the air. 
Its cry is loud and dissonant ; there is not one of 
its half-dozen calls which has anything pleasant or 
musical in it, and it seems specially designed by 
nature for the office of general frightener-up of 
game, which it so readily fulfils, and which causes 
it to be so cordially detested by the sportsman. Other 
birds do not at ordinary times take much notice of 
man ; not so the Minah — it treats him as if, like the 
White Owl, he were an hereditary enemy. You may 
see as many as a dozen Minahs collect on the high 
boughs of a tree and all join in what seems a con- 
tinual querulous complaint at your presence in the 
neighbourhood. 
WATTLE-BIRD 
Coleia carunculata tregellasi 
The largest of the Honeyeaters, the Wattle-bird, is 
not likely to be confounded with any other, unless 
it be with the Brush Wattle-bird, which is smaller 
and has not the yellow patch in the centre of the 
abdomen which distinguishes the present species. 
Not even the most devoted Australian patriot 
could describe the hoarse bark of the Wattle-bird 
as a song, and yet in August the bird knows how to 
exchange the croak of the rest of the year for a call of 
joyous exultation, which is as fine a strain of wood- 
