Introduction: Migration. 
47 
the birds seen about his place was most astonishing. The Torres Straits Islands 
serve as resting places for the birds crossing from New Guinea; Booby Island 
is evidently thus used, and the number of its land-birds is thus to be accounted 
for. This island corresponds thus in this respect with such an island as Heligo- 
land. ... It is the last place in the world, as viewed from the sea, with clouds 
of Boobies hovering over it, from which one would expect two new land-birds 
[a Dove and a Bail described by Gould] to hail. Our officers laughed at the 
notion of there being quails or anything to shoot upon it. . . . On August 
1841, the officers of the ‘Beagle’ shot 145 quails, 18 pigeons, 12 rails of two 
species, and 3 pigeons [“doves” in Stokes’ ‘Discoveries in Australia’ 1846 II, 
330].” The contents of the game-book of the “Beagle” when among the islands 
of the Arafura Sea are large and interesting, though unscientific; an extract is 
given by Stokes, 1. c. The transit of the Australian Bee-eater, Merops ornatas^ 
across the Torres Straits has been remarked upon by two observers (see p. 250). 
This bird takes some weeks to travel from here to its breeding grounds in New 
South Wales. 
Touching migration in Australia Mr. A. J. North (zh lit. 7. VIII. 1894) has 
most obligingly furnished us with the following: “There is nothing published in 
the Proceedings of any society beyond a paper contributed by Dr. E. P. Bamsay 
to the Ornithological Congress held ... in Vienna about twelve years ago . . . 
As there pointed out by Dr. Bamsay we have, comparatively speaking, but very 
few migratory birds in Australia, but a great number of nomadic species which 
shift from one point of the country to another, many of them appearing regu- 
larly every season in the spring to breed and returning north or west directly 
the cold weather sets in. From my notes which I have kept for the past 
twenty years I will give you the date or time of arrival and departure of the 
species asked for . . . 
^^Chaetura caudacuta. This bird arrives in New South Wales during the 
hottest months of the year. I have noted them as early as December, but they 
usually arrive in January and depart again about the middle of April. I have 
never seen them resting, they pass the whole of the day on the wing. 
^^Cypselus pacificus. Arrives and departs at the same time as the preceding 
species, with which it is more often than not seen in company. It is not, 
however, so numerous as C. caudacuta. 
’"‘‘Eurpstomus pacificus and Scythrops novaehollandiae. These species arrive in 
Northern Queensland about the end of August, but their appearance is infiuenced 
greatly by the season; sometimes it is at the end of September, and in 1892 
it was as late as the 12*^ of October when Eurystomus arrived. Phey leave 
again on the approach of cold weather about the end of April. In New South 
Wales Eurystomus arrives usually about the middle of September and departs 
again early in April. I saw young birds nearly hedged taken from their nesting 
place in the hollow limb of a tree near Newcastle on the 3*'^ of October, 1893; 
this was very early for New South Wales. 
