78 
The Queensland Naturalist January, 1938 
In the paddock around the lake were some kooka- 
burras and sacred kingfishers, noisy miners, nankeen kes- 
trels, butcher birds, magpies, magpie larks, chestnut- 
crowned babblers, crows, sordid wood swallows, starlings, 
welcome swallows, also greenies and rosella parrots. 
It is possible that the numbers of birds listed were 
greater than would usually be the case owing to the 
general scarcity of water. 
The lake was again visited early in February, 1937, 
when not a drop of water was to be seen. On the dried 
mud of the lake lay the carcases of cattle, and only a 
couple of pairs of spur-winged plovers remained where a. 
few weeks before so many score had been, and about 30 
straw-necked ibis fed on the myriads of grasshoppers 
which now infested the paddock. Desolation reigned, for 
with these exceptions, the lake bed and paddock were bare 
of wading and forest birds. Similar scenes were to be 
found in a number of other places, but the above will 
serve as a typical example. 
In the Logan River, at the pumping station near 
Beaudesert, the water had dried up to such an extent that 
a large number of fish died in the heated water 
(“Courier-Mail,” Brisbane, about January 23rd, 1937). 
I received the following information from Mr. C. 
Fenton, of the pumping station: — “The date on which the 
fish died was January 21st, 1937. The water was running 
and was from 1-J inches to 12 inches deep (readings taken 
daily). 
There were mullet and catfish to 9 inches long, and 
eels to 30 inches long, and any fish that got into the 
shallower water that day surely died, but those in deeper 
water survived.” 
Again on 26th and 27th January, as reported in 
“Courier-Mail” with photographs, hundreds of mullet 
were floating dead in the shallow water of the partly-dried 
up Nudgee Lagoon, near Brisbane, while many others 
floated gasping in the over-heated water. Many fish 
weighed up to 3 lbs. and hundreds less. An insanitary 
condition was feared by residents. 
As the rain did not come for a week or two, there was 
probably little left of either water or fish by that time. 
Turning from birds and fishes to plants, it may be 
reported that in November, 1936, the beautiful imported 
pest plant, the water hyacinth, (Eichhornia speciosa) had, 
owing to the lack of floods or freshes to clear it out, been 
