THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
Mr. Charles Belcher reports : “ This bird is a visitor to Southern Victoria, 
though a common enough one in good seasons. It has a curious habit of 
soaring in small flocks at an immense height.” 
Mr. E. J. Christian, writing from Northern Victoria, says : “ In this dis- 
trict they are very common, and the best friend we have, as we suffer from 
plagues of grasshoppers and this bird eats them all day long. In the autumn 
of 1907 when we had no grass we irrigated a few acres for the stud rams, 
but as soon as the grass came up we had the grasshoppers. They arrived 
one day at 7 o’clock a.m. and the Ibis at 12 o’clock. By their timely arrival 
and action they saved the garden. 
“ When flying they often use the V formation. They are very slow 
fliers. Before settling down the whole flock will wheel round two or three 
times.” 
Mr. Tom Carter sends me the following : “ The first recorded appearance 
of the Straw-necked Ibis in the Gascoyne district of West Australia was in 
May, 1888. I was on a station on the Minilya River when flocks of these 
birds appeared, and both the earliest settlers (settled about 1880) and the 
natives said they had never seen birds like them before, except J. Brockman, 
who told me he had seen and shot a solitary bird a few years previously, 
further north. 
“ After the break up of the 1889-91 drought, immense numbers were to 
be seen all over the country, from the Gascoyne River to Point Cloates. For 
several weeks thousands used to roost every night on the hummocky peaks 
of a large drift sand hill, close behind my house at Point Cloates. It was a 
most interesting sight to see long strings of the birds coming in from various 
directions about sundown, to take up their sleeping quarters, and a great 
commotion of croaking and squabbling for places went on until dark. The 
next visitation of Ibises was in the record wet season of 1900, when they were 
again generally distributed through the country, but did not appear in 
such numbers on the coast as formerly. In October, my foreman, who 
was camped with sheep on my inland run, sent two native boys down the 
Cardabia creek with the bullock dray, to find and bring back an iron water 
tank that had been washed away in the previous phenomenal flood. As 
they were away some days he asked them on their return where they had found 
the tank, and they mentioned a place about eight miles from where he was 
camped. He then wanted to know how it was they had been away so long 
and in reply they told him to look inside the tank in the cart, and doing so 
was surprised to see about two hundred eggs. It seemed the boys had found 
a great colony of Straw-necked Ibis in full breeding, and they had camped 
in its vicinity with the intention of eating all the eggs, but, as they regretfully 
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