Ai\ AUSTUAXIAN BIBD BOOK. 
59 
plumes "Osprey plumes." Now, the Osprey is a Fish-Hawk, and 
so possibly of little use to the land-dweller, but these plumes grow 
on the back and neck of a valuable insect destroyer. The extent 
of this trade is appalling. At one plume sale, held in London 
on 4th August, 1909, the breeding plumes of 24,000 birds were 
offered for sale. Think of it! The slow starvation of 40,000 
nestlings, the death of 64,000 birds, to provide the plumes for one 
day's sale. No, ladies, if you consider you are in need of orna- 
ment, wear ostrich plumes and pheasants* feathers, for these do 
not involve the death of a bird, but rather the reverse, for the 
greater the demand for these feathers, the more birds will be 
bred; but spare the Egret. 
The Reef Heron is found on beaches from the Bay of Bengal 
to New Zealand. It has given scientists much trouble, for it 
has a pure-white form and a dark slaty-gray form. We 
found and photographed the nests on Mast Head and Heron 
Islands. This was a prize, for no photograph of a Reef Heron's 
nest had been published previously. As soon as the falling tide 
exposed the reef round the island, Reef Herons, Gulls, Plovers, 
Dottrels, and Terns, went out to have their next meal. 
The "Blue Crane" of the country dwellers is the * 'White-fronted 
Heron" of the bird-lover. ''Fronted" in a bird na,me refers only 
to the forehead. Herons are valuable birds to the grazier, 
farmer, and irrigationist, for, in addition to insects and snails, 
they eat ynbbies (fresh-water crayfish), which bore into the banks 
and bed of irrigation channels, and so cause much loss of water 
by soakage. 
Distinguished from these birds mainly by its nocturnal habit is 
the interesting Nankeen Night Heron, our one representative of 
a practically cosmopolitan genus. Our one Night Heron hides 
on a leafy bough asleep during the daytime. About dusk he sets 
off to a swamp. 
The Australian Bittern, also our one representative of a cos- 
mopolitan genus, skulks in a bed of reeds. Hence it is seldom 
seen. Its loud, dismal, booming note probably assisted in the 
formation of the Bunyip legends of the blacks. I saw more Bit- 
terns in a recent trip down the Brisbane than I ever saw before. 
At breeding time these birds assemble in very large com- 
panies, and their nesting-places are called heronries or rookeries. 
The chief rookeries here are in the Riverina, where the great 
annual overflow of that fine river, the Murray, converts the coun- 
try into a great series of lakes and swamps. Here water animals 
live in large numbers, and thousands of birds take advantage of 
this abundant food supply to nest there in the enormous redgums. 
Each bird is the close relative of a similar bird in Europe, so 
that what is read concerning Herons and Egrets there, applies 
equally to our members of this widely-distributed family. Eating 
grasshoppers and other insects in great numbers, they are friends 
of the farmer and grazier. Destroying yabbies and other burrow- 
ing water animals, they are valuable allies of the irrigationist, 
and it is decidedly bad policy to shoot one. 
