THE BIEDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
in peace. Next day we proceeded farther up the Coorong about a mile, and 
dropped anchor again, this time off Upper Pelican Island, and rowed ashore 
in the dinghy. Here we found that the pehcans had taken up their quarters 
more recently, as there were numbers of nests, some having the full clutch 
of two eggs, while others had but one fresh egg, and others again just scratched 
out ready to receive the eggs. Some eggs were well incubated, and others 
fresh. It was seventeen years since I visited these islands as described in 
Campbell’s Nests and Eggs of Australian Birds, and I was very pleased to 
once more make the acquaintance of my old friends the pelicans. The nests 
were simply slight hollows scratched in the hard clay, there being no effort 
made to line this in any way, except that a very little down sometimes comes 
out of the birds and helps to soften the hard locality to a very small degree. 
The nests are placed in the open, and not in any sheltered places. Some 
state that three eggs is the clutch of the pehcan, but I have seen hundreds 
of nests in my time, and I can safely say that two is the full clutch, and should 
there be three, which sometimes occurs, it is accidental, as it is the easiest 
thing in the world amongst these cumbersome birds for an egg to get rolled 
out, and then roll into the next nest. The eggs vary considerably in size 
and shape, some being long and narrow, while others are dumpy and short : 
they get very soiled when sat upon for long, as the dirt that is about gets 
mixed up in the nest, and the young from a neighbouring nest often waddles 
over another’s eggs and disarranges them. The texture of the eggs is very 
coarse and limey : they are pme white when first laid, often having blood 
marks upon them, their rough nature scratching the intestine of the bird in 
the passage out ; sometimes there are large lumps of lime sticking to the sides 
of the egg, and in others the lime is so thick, that when the bird places its 
rough foot upon the soft shell, a good impression is made on the shell, and as 
it hardens, it will remain on the shell until the young hatch out. 
“ The young are destitute of feathers or down until they are fairly well 
grovm. The pelicans must have started breeding as early as July, and it 
would be well into December before the young would get away.” 
Berney’s* observations of this bird in North Queensland read : 
“ There appears to be no regularity in the movements of the Pehcans 
that visit us, summer or winter, good seasons or bad. As often as not it is 
a solitary bird that is seen ; from that to half a dozen, while in mid- winter of 
1902 I saw between forty and fifty together, which constitutes my record 
mob for these parts. Their visits, though fairly frequent, are of short 
duration. When soaring in wide circles overhead, with wings outstretched 
* Emu, Vol. VI., p. 15.5, 1907. 
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