322 Walter Goodfellow—A Collector on Melville Island


have been much more numerous on Melville. They were around the

camp every day during my stay in flocks of six or seven, or in pairs

only, often sitting still for a long time at a stretch. Although they

are not found near Darwin, they are well known there, and many people

kept them. They are called Smutty or Black-headed Rosellas.


Black Cockatoos ( Banhsians ) were fairly numerous. I often came

across them, sometimes in pairs, or as many as eight together. They

are real acrobats in the trees, and seem to thoroughly enjoy life. They

are fond of clinging to the bark of gum trees, and stripping off large

pieces ; probably searching for grubs. Many times they rested for a

while on my dead tree. Someone told me they had seen them preparing

to nest near Darwin in July.


The Lemon-crested Cockatoo was everywhere and always very

frisky, especially in the evenings, and sometimes when it was too dark

to see them. Up in the north they seemed to have much longer crests

than those from the south. They had many in captivity in Darwin,

and I thought I had never seen any with such long crests before. I

knew of one an absolute champion in this respect.


The Bare-eyed Cockatoo (0. sanguinea) was likewise a common

bird on the island, and nothing like so noisy as the former species.

Their flight is slightly different too. Twelve rapid flaps, followed by a

very long glide. By this alone I could always distinguish them, even in

the far distance, and unlike the others, they are silent when flying.

The blacks, both on Melville and Bathurst insisted this is the female

of the Lemon-crested species. This again bears out what I have found

in many other countries : that the natives after all know very little

about their own birds. I have often heard people say “ the natives

know all about them you may be sure, much better than we do

But they don’t. They know their habits so far as the right places to

look for them, and their nests too perhaps, but they are only interested

in all these creatures from a food point of view. I have had examples

of their ignorance over and over again, relating to mammals, birds,

reptiles, and insects.


The Bare-eyed Cockatoo is far less suspicious than the Lemon-

crests. They often settled in the dead tree, and stayed there even

when I was moving about directly below—a thing the others nevesr did.



