GROUND PARROT. 
and great powers of running it is seldom or never seen until it is flushed, and 
then only for a short time ; as it soon pitches again and runs off to a place 
of seclusion. On the approach of danger it crouches on the earth or runs 
stealthily through the grasses, and, from the strong scent it emits, dogs 
road and point as dead to it as they do to ordinary game birds ; consequently, 
when shooting over swampy land in Australia, the sportsman is never certain 
whether a Parrakeet, a Quail, or a Snipe will rise to the point of his dog. It 
flies with great rapidity, frequently making several zigzag turns in the short 
distance of a hundred yards, which it seldom exceeds without again pitching 
to the ground. Its flesh is excellent, being delicate in flavour, and equalling, 
if not surpassing, that of the Quail and Snipe. Its five or six white eggs are 
deposited on the bare ground.” 
Captain S. A. White has written : “ These rare birds were once very 
common on the Adelaide plains, and both my father and his brother have 
spoken of the numbers the black boys snared with horsehair snares and have 
also spoken of the many nests these boys would find in a day and the eggs 
devoured by them. The birds had become extinct as far as this locality is 
concerned before my days of observation began, and I doubt very much if 
there be any left in South Australia. We met with this bird in the heath 
country near Mallacoota Inlet, close to the Victorian and New South Wales 
border : they were rare and very shy ; they could be flushed once, when they 
would fly just above the cover for a short distance and then down, but after 
that no end of beating would always fail in flushing them the second time.” 
Mr. J. W. Mellor has forwarded me notes covering exactly the same 
information, so it is unnecessary to retail them. 
Mr. H. Stuart Dove’s notes, however, from Tasmania read : 44 This pretty 
Parrakeet, with red frontal bar and long pointed tail, I used to encounter 
on the button-grass plains in the vicinity of Table Cape, North-West Tasmania. 
It appears to be migratory and to reach us only when summer is well advanced, 
as February and March were the usual months for sighting it, and I do not 
remember meeting one earlier than that. It appears never to perch, even 
on a fence, and I never came across its eggs. I have a record on April 8th, 
1898 : 4 One of the elegant Ground Parrakeets was observed to-day on the 
plains : it rose up in front of me, took a short flight, then dropped again in 
the herbage. It is strange that this species should only be seen here towards 
the end of summer or beginning of autumn and almost always alone.’ Again, 
as late as April 13th : 4 Another of the Ground Parrakeets seen to-day on 
Table Cape plains : it behaved like the other, flying twenty or thirty yards 
in front of me, then dropping suddenly among the tussocks with which the 
plain is covered.’ I have not seen any on this part of the coast, where the 
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