THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
is a merry good-night ; one bird beginning, followed by another, and then 
they all join in the chorus. This is continued till it is quite dark, or even 
later. The Jackass is also the first bird to awake in the morning, its merry 
note pealing out before one recognises that the dawn is breaking. It is 
usually about a quarter of an hour before the next bird awakes. 
Food. Beetles, spiders, grubs, mice, lizards, small birds, especially the 
young taken from the nest, and the freshwater crayfish or yabbies {Astacopsis 
hicarinatus), for which it dives, catching them in water up to two feet in depth. . . 
It has been noted that he does not eat his food except on the ground or on 
a large flat, horizontal branch of a tree. . . . They swallow their pounded 
food whole, ejecting the indigestible portions (bones, hair, etc.) in quids. . . 
Flight. Very straight, not undulating, long, even, slow wing-movement. 
On alighting they throw the head back a little and elevate the tail, and usually 
utter a few gurgles. The tail is kept slowly moving up and down like a pump 
handle for a few minutes after settling. It is not jerked like that of a rail, 
but moves with slow, regular beats.” 
Mr. F. E. Howe has written me : “ These Kingfishers are very common 
all over Victoria. What keen sight he has ! I have noticed him in the dusk 
of evening sitting on a fence very motionless, but suddenly he is ofi fully twenty 
yards and, pitching on the ground, piclss up some unwary worm and, flying 
back to the fence, his tail rises spasmodically two or three times ere the worm 
is devoured. Whenever he perches after a flight this strange habit of raising 
the tail vertically gives him a most peculiar appearance. As he perches 
suddenly, perhaps it helps him to balance himself more readily. At Ring- 
wood, on October 1st, 1905, in company with Messrs. Ross, Mattingley and 
Godfrey, a strange thing happened. One of the party had ascended a tree for 
the nest of Strepera cuneicaudata when a great noise, as if a dozen white 
Cockatoos were screaming in chorus, was heard. Mr. Mattingley headed a 
wild rush up-hill, and finding it came from the throats of two Jackasses as 
they lay fighting on the ground with their bills interlocked, placed a stick 
across their bills and secured the pair of them. So enraged were they that 
they were oblivious to all around, and even after capture they had to be 
dragged apart. 
At Ferntree Gully, on Nov. 22, 1908, we found a nest containing three 
young in the hollow of a tall white gum about thirty feet up. Mr. Ross, using 
climbing-irons, scrambled up the tree. The young were not long hatched and 
they were blind and featherless ; the biU was black, the gape was bluish-black, 
and the colour of the mouth was of a fleshy- pink.” 
Mr. E. J. Christian also wrote ; “ One of the most valuable birds we have, 
as it eats snakes, lizards, worms, insects, mice, etc. With the larger things it 
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