THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
Way, I never saw an individual amongst the debris surrounding these forma- 
tions. The species of salt-bush it prefers grows to a height of about 3 feet. 
I can give no hints as to how to find this bird. One may pay visit after visit 
and spend hours in its haunts without seeing more than its tracks. Another 
day one may walk right up to the bush it is skulking under, but it does not 
follow that the Amytornis will break cover. If it has a song it seldom utters 
it. The call note is faint and very high-pitched, but both at Lake Austin 
and Lake Way I heard individuals utter a sound precisely like the mew of a cat. 
The female is much more wary than the male, and one seldom gets more than 
a glimpse of her as she bounds from bush to bush. On a single occasion, the 
weather being calm and genial, I had the exceptional opportunity of seeing 
three of these Grass- Wrens at the same moment. I knew a party was about, 
and at the expenditure of some patience and artifice I enticed them around 
me. One hopped to the top of a salt-bush, another came out in the open and 
even began pecking about, whilst a third took a series of peeps at me from 
behind another bush. From the large size of their tails I judged all these 
to be males. The male, too, shows no rufous patches at the side of the 
breast.” 
Whitlock then described the finding of the nest, which was open, and made 
some comments on the confusion between textilis, gigantura and macrourus, 
acknowledging that the two latter might prove to be the same, but “the Western 
birds, should not, with our present knowledge, be referred to the smaller and 
less robust A. textilis (of the East !).” 
Mr. Tom Carter’s notes read : “ On June 6th, 1908, two Large-tailed 
Grass-Wrens were seen by me in one of my paddocks near Broome Hill, and 
also on two or three subsequent dates they were seen near the same place, on 
a small rounded stony hill, having a patch of 4 marlock ’ scrub on one side 
of it. On June 21st, I succeeded in shooting one of these birds and being misled 
by the description of Gould’s A. macrourus in Gould’s Handbook, Vol. I., 
p. 338, where the total length is stated to be 5J inches, while my bird measured 
7J inches, I described my specimen as A. varia. Mr. A. J. North afterwards 
pointed out to me that Gould’s measurement was an error, so I withdrew my 
name in favour of Gould’s. 
“ Oct. 19, 1908. One of these birds was shot out of a party of six in marlock 
scrub about thirty miles east of Broome Hill (probably a family of adult 
birds and fledged young of the year). On Sept. 1, 1910, another specimen 
was obtained near the same locality by chasing it until it ran into a small hole 
under a tree stump, whence it was captured alive. These birds run with extra- 
ordinary speed and tails erect in the bottom of the scrub, in small parties of 
four or six. One of the above specimens was eight inches in length. Most 
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