t 
THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
good speed, when I saw two Bustard’s eggs laid between some bunches of 
spinifex, and before I could pull up the off wheel crushed both eggs. When 
in down, there is always a great disparity in size in a pair of young birds. 
Doubtless male and female. On different occasions I have taken young birds 
home but could never succeed in rearing any. The Bustard is to a great 
extent, nocturnal in its feeding, as very many times when camping out, I 
have heard the notes of the birds throughout the night, and seen and heard 
many flying above the camp.” 
“ Near the Fitzroy River [North-west Australia] Mr. Ferris found a fresh 
egg on the 11th November, and several young birds were seen a few weeks 
later. On two occasions birds with their single chicks were noticed walking 
to water, and on attempting to approach them we found the young ones 
disappear. In each case they had forced themselves into the hole formed by 
a horse’s hoof in the dry mud. Near Mount Campbell I counted eighteen 
Bustards aU in view at once. Whilst travelling near the Nerrima Creek on 
1st April, I bagged a brace of Bustards, which were in capital condition, and 
must have weighed nearly 20 lbs. each . . . These birds were in heavy 
moult, but the fact that the grasshoppers had been plentiful no doubt 
accounted for their condition.”* 
The bird figured and described is a male, collected at Greenough 
Crossing, West Australia, in 1897. 
* Keeu’tland, Trans. Boy. Soc. South Awtr., Vol. XXII., p. 185, 1898. 
370 
41 
