June 1947 The Queensland Naturalist 
53 
branches. These fungi play an important part in the 
rapid decay of wood on the wet forest floor. 
On wattles, the large galls caused by the rust fungus, 
Uromycladium tepperianum were not uncommon. Many 
of these galls were inhabited by wood-boring insects, but 
the borers are only secondary invaders, the initial cause 
of the swellings being the rust fungus. 
The ubiquitous paspalu-in ergot was observed on 
Paspalum dilatation, but the native species Paspalum orbi- 
cnlare was not infected. 
BIRDS OF NOOSA 
THE ORNITHOLOGICAL REPORT OF THE EASTER 
CAMP, 1946 
By MARGARET HOLLAND 
The site of the Easter Camp gave our ornithologists 
fine opportunities for observing ocean, forest and scrub 
birds. Sea birds proved disappointingly few — the silver 
gull, crested tern and red backed sea eagle. On our trip 
up the Noosa River three cormorants were encountered — 
the black, pied and little pied. The familiar white faced 
heron was feeding on the edge of the river and several 
Australian egrets were espied. The monotony of the end 
less mangroves was broken by the brightness of azure, 
forest, sacred and mangrove kingfishers. On the mud flats 
at the estuary of the river the song of the mangrove 
warbler could be heard, but not for long, as the sandflies 
rendered conditions unbearable. 
The whistling of the whistling eagle awakened us first 
thing iu the morning from a majestic gum on the front 
lawn. Little wattle birds, magpies, little friar birds, scaly- 
breasted lorikeets, grey fantails. rufous whistlers and 
grey thrushes made merry within sight and sound of our 
boarding house. Did I omit the brown honeyeater .’ How 
could T .’ At the time I rather hoped 1 might never hear 
it again. We went for a day’s outing to Alexandra Bry 
and it was a case of brown honeyeaters all the way. On 
our left the deep blue sea. on our right the green hill and 
banksia trees and brown honeyeaters in myriads. Still 
they certainly can sing. 
