320 Walter Goodfellow—A Collector on Melville Island


but returned again at dusk and spent the night there. For several nights

after that just a pair rested there, until one night they found two

Wedge-tailed Eagles in possession and never came again. Eagles

were very numerous in my part of the island, also many species of

Hawks great and small. I put it down to the fact that there must have

been a great many dead kangaroos in the neighbourhood. One of

my neighbours went out hunting every day with a rifle of a bore far

too small to kill a kangaroo, unless hit in a vital part. He never followed

up a wounded animal, and seemed to take it as an insult they did not

wait for him to get close to them. When he came back empty handed

he told me how many he had wounded ; some of these I used to see

later, half eaten by dingos, or birds of prey. Kangaroos were very

numerous, and on more than one occasion ran right through the camp

chased by dingos. The latter however stopped short and turned back

when they saw a human being about. I saw kangaroos about the camp

several times on moonlight nights, from where I lay in bed. Dingos

howled around nearly every night.


Eagles were very fearless, and took absolutely no notice whatever

of my presence. They were often mobbed by the Lemon-crested

Cockatoos, and when the former settled on the dead tree, the Cockatoos

alighted on the highest branches of other trees at a respectable distance,

keeping up an incessant screech until the Eagles moved on.


The sunsets were really marvellous, and at this hour the whole

bush took on quite a different aspect. The whitened and unsightly

trunks then looked on fire, especially my dead tree, when its grotesquely

twisted branches looked as if they were writhing in the agony of

burning.


The commonest member of the parrot family was without doubt

the Ked-collared Lory. I often think of one evening at sunset, when

a flock of perhaps a hundred settled on the dead tree and it looked as

if it had suddenly burst into gorgeous bloom. Large numbers were

always around the camp during the whole of my stay. It is also a very

common bird in and around Darwin and shows little fear of man.

The proprietress of the hotel there had some in an aviary at the back,

and I often saw numbers of the wild ones clinging to the netting trying

to get in. Last June a lady had some young ones brought in which she



