EASTERN BUSTARD. 
Captain S. A. White sends me the following : “ These fine birds once 
visited the plains round Adelaide in the autumn every year, but have now 
become very rare. I have noticed that they always paid this part of the 
country their annual visit when the crickets were very numerous. These 
insects, varied by salt-bush or grass, constituted their diet at that time of the 
year. I have met with these birds north of Adelaide in flocks of 20 to 30 
birds ; they are generally very wary and require a lot of stalking.” 
Mr. Edwin Ashby says this bird is very fond of feeding in stubble 
paddocks, picking up the grain that has been dropped during stripping. 
Mr. Sandland reports that years ago they were common at Burra, South 
Australia, but that now, owing to the birds eating the phosphorised pollard 
laid for rabbits, they have become very scarce. Foxes also kill the stragglers 
and destroy the eggs, so that as the bird only lays one or two eggs a year it 
will probably soon be driven out of the cultivated districts.” 
Mr. F. L. Berney considers January, February, and March as the usual 
breeding-months, although he has found eggs after these months. “ The 
‘ strutting ’ and ‘ calling ’ are also confined to these months, with the end of 
December thrown in . . . The ‘ call ’ is a soft, hollow roar, which one finds 
hard to describe in words, but it can be produced by contracting the lips to 
a circle just large enough to insert the point of one’s little finger and then 
pronouncing ‘who-o-o-o’ drawn out by expressing the breath fairly forcibly so 
that the sound is produced by the rigid lips and not the roof of the mouth.”* 
“ The birds are most useful, destroying large numbers of grasshoppers. 
They are only half-insectivorous, as various forms of low-growing vegetation, 
particularly the bitter fruit of a small wild melon, are eaten. The numbers 
to be seen here vary according as the season is favourable to them or not. In 
November, 1903, I saw a flock of 43 ; in February 1905 I counted 100 in 
sight at the one time, and I remember, some sixteen or seventeen years ago, I 
counted 300 in the course of a ride of eight miles over a piece of country 
that had been swept the night before by a bush fire. 
“ Bush fires are a great attraction to ‘ Turkeys.’ The birds may be 
noticed coming up from different quarters as the rising smoke gives them 
the signal. At night I have watched them following close behind the fire, 
darting in and out amongst the flames and smoke, catching the grasshoppers 
and other creatures driven out more or less overcome by the heat. 
“ January to April are the nesting months. I have never found eggs 
in December, and until this year I had no record for April. Very rarely do 
they nest in the winter. I have only two notes in reference to their doing 
so occasional! V, both in 1901. 
* Emu, Vol. HI., p. 69, 1903. 
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