LITTLE BITTERN. 
by hand, but when disturbed it can fly very well, although with slow and 
laboured flight. Its food consists principally of small fish and aquatic 
insects.”* 
Mr. North further records this species from the Northern Territory and 
also from as far inland, in New South Wales, as Narromine on the banks 
of the Macquarie River, and about three hundred and ten miles west 
of Sydney. 
Keartland records it from Gippsland, in Victoria : “ Sometimes it will 
straighten itself up like a stick, at other times it wiU crouch and puff its 
feathers out until it resembles a ball.”t 
The bird figured and described is an adult, collected at Long Bay, 
Sydney, New South Wales, on July 15th, 1908, and is the type of Ixdbrychus 
minutus alisteri mihi. For the time being I am uniting the birds from 
South-west Australia with those from Eastern Australia ; but I cannot find 
any record of this bird from South Australia. 
* North, Ausir. Mus. Sp. Cat., no. 1., Vol. IV., p. 41, 1913. 
j- Keartland, ib., p. 42. 
