THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
Gilbert,* writing of this species from Houtman’s Abrolhos, says : “ The 
nests are so completely plastered with the excrement of the bird, that at first 
sight they appear to be entirely formed of that material ; they are either 
placed on the ground in a clear open space, or on the top of the thick scrub, 
over those of the Onydioprion fuliginosus, the two species incubating together 
with perfect harmony. On walking among the nests I was surprised to observe 
the pertinacity with which the birds kept their post ; in fact, they would not 
remove from off the egg or the young, but would suffer themselves to be 
trodden upon or taken off with the hand ; and so thickly were the nests placed, 
that it was no easy matter to avoid crushing either eggs or birds at every 
step. By the middle of January the eggs were nearly ready to hatch, and there 
would be an overwhelming increase of this species yearly but for the check 
which Nature has provided against it in the presence of a small lizard which 
is very abundant about their breeding-places, and which finds an easy prey 
in the young of this Noddy and of Onychoprion fuliginosus. I am satisfied 
that not more than one out of every twenty birds hatched ever reaches 
maturity, or lives long enough to take wing. 
“ I did not observe the Noddy on any but the South Island. As it finds 
an abundant supply of food, consisting of small fish, small mollusca, medusse, 
cuttle-fish, etc., immediately outside the outer reef, it has no occasion to go 
out far to sea. I never observed it feeding in the smooth quiet water between 
the outer reef and the islands.” 
Macgillivrayt records this species as abundantly distributed over Torres 
Strait, but he never met with it to the southward of Raine’s Islet, on which, 
as at Bramble Key, it was found breeding in prodigious numbers. 
Metcalfe! reports on Norfolk Island that this species begins to lay in 
October. The eggs are not laid in large colonies, but here and there in 
convenient spots all over the island. 
Mr. Tom Carter§ sometimes found immense flocks of these birds on the 
low sandbanks adjoining Frazer Island, North-west Australia, about the 
middle of May : “ On one occasion such numbers of these birds circled in 
columnar formation above the sand bar (which is about four miles from the 
house) as to look exactly like dense clouds of smoke, and my natives were so 
positive that another shipwrecked crew had landed there, and were making 
signals, that they persuaded me to go out in the boat to their relief, only to 
find that the birds were the cause of the illusion.” 
Gould’s Handb. Bird Austr., Vol. II., p. 414, 1866. 
t ib., p. 415. 
406 
t Ibis 1885, p. 264. 
§ Emu, Vol. III., p. 208, 1904. 
