112 The Queensland Naturalist 
December 1948 
the mainlands of South America, South Africa and Aus- 
tralia. The royal penguin patronises Macquarie Island 
and the Falklands for the breeding season. 
The strangest story of the lot however, is that of 
the giant emperor penguin, a handsome, upright 
bird standing nearly 48 inches high. Because of 
its long breeding season, it has to start nesting 
in winter in the furthest south position of them all where 
blizzards and storms are their daily portion as either bird 
stands upright in the freezing weather nursing its one 
large egg in a peculiar but providential external cavity 
in the lower portion of abdomen between the flippers. 
The egg when laid is hastily transferred to that recep- 
tacle as any delay would mean an immediate freeze to 
the ice on which they stand and the end of the egg biolo- 
gically. As the egg is nursed or incubated for about 
two months, both parents take a hand. Some careful 
team work and faultless technique is necessary during the 
changeover operation or the fearful cold immediately 
ruins the chick’s chance of a successful hatching. After 
the precarious hatching comes a precarious rearing of the 
chick. As might be expected, due to these awful nesting 
conditions, the mortality among eggs and chicks is very 
considerable with the result that many of these large birds 
are deprived of their chance of offspring early in the 
piece and their parental instinct, which is always very 
strong, is frustrated. This means that any chick that 
strays in its early days is at once the target of affection 
of all the bereft parents near it. the result being that 
before the poor ehiok is safely attached to any one of 
them, it has become just another easuality. However, 
despite all these rigours the race of emperors flourishes 
and they continue to he the most marvellous migrants of 
the whole bird-world. 
In Australia the annual bird migration is not nearly 
as spectacular as those of the northern climes, but none 
the less there is quite a movement north and south each 
year as the seasons change. As mentioned earlier, the 
greatest movement is among our waders, nearly all of 
whom make off north in the autumn. Sea-curlews, whim- 
brels. some dotterels, sandpipers, stints, one of our species 
of snipe and possibly others not yet. recorded, journey to 
Siberia. China, Thibet, Mongolia, the Gobi Desert (Emu, 
