November, 1943 The Queensland Naturalist 65 
The other call is also a very pretty one. A. H. 
Chisholm in his book, "B i rd Wonders of Australia/' 
describes it rather aptly: "Clear, fresh, joyous and 
seemingly quite careless, it suggested nothing so much 
as a small boy on holiday expressing his feelings towards 
the world at large. And yet there was in this melody, 
as intuition rather than judgment suggested, some 
quality more airy, more birdlike, than even the merriest 
boy could achieve." 
The owner of such a voice is plump and grey. 
Slipping in and out the mangrove leaves she (I always 
think of it as she) is rather difficult to see; and although 
she doesn't sing continuously, when she does, you just 
have to stop and listen. 
In the big gums in the paddock you can always 
hear the starlings, I think, myself, that the starling is 
rather a vulgar type. Sometimes a few will come up for 
a bath in the garden, but very rarely. The pale-headed 
rosella looks in on us quite a lot, while following the 
flowers, its soft mellow whistle completely belying the 
fact that it IS a parrot. The scaly-breasted lorikeets 
wing their noisy way across our skies, too, but they are 
always so high up and move so fast, that somehow, in 
spite of their beauty, I don't have the same amount of 
feeling for them as for the little souls who peep at you 
from behind tree trunks and through the grass. The 
little yellow-tailed tit spends spring and summer with 
us and is a great favourite of mine. I also have a soft 
spot for our silver-eye who is also quite a good little 
mimic. Only the other morning it made a very good 
attempt at the Grey Thrush's call and imitated that of 
the cage canary perfectly — I suppose someone nearby 
had one and, liking its song, the silver-eye had added 
it to its own repertoire. We have a very nice little 
creek — the dirty one higher up — which runs through a 
pretty patch of bushland. A creek is a great asset, 
because when the sun is on the water, birds cf all 
descriptions come for a dip. They all have their ways 
and bathe differently. The silver-eyes like to sit in the 
pools made by the rocks — 3, 4 or 5 of them — all flipping 
about in the most adorable fashion. But the honey- 
eaters — honeyeaters mean to me the brown of water 
slipping over rocks, glints of sun and the flash of wings. 
Scarlet, white-naped, brown, and yellow-faced — they 
