Vol i» 24 IV ’ ] A. H. CHISHOLM, Seeking Rare Parrots. 
29 
search was really akin to the old affair of the needle and the 
haystack. 
Of the voice of the species (described by A. J. Campbell as 
a feeble twitter, and by the late F. W. Andrews, 1883, as “very 
beautiful, sweet notes”) we heard nothing. Nor were we suc¬ 
cessful in our amiable endeavour to cause the Parrots to perch 
in the stunted banksias that fringed their swamp. But we did 
cause one to achieve something of a record, or at least give a fine 
display, by flying fully two hundred yards in full view. That 
was a bird which had deluded Mr. Petrie into believing that 
it could be caught. When flushed it dropped only twenty yards 
away — dropped with the amazing headlong dive of the species— 
upon which the ambitious forester ran at once to the spot. Then 
we had an indication of what extraordinary speed the bird can 
develop when running through a forbidding tangle of grass; in 
a matter of seconds it had got several yards away from the spot 
where it alighted! Flushed a second time, it rose on strong 
wings and eddied swiftly, again alternately beating and gliding, 
away and away to the other end of the swamp. Presumably that 
zigzag flight, which never carries the bird more than a few feet 
above the grass, has been cultivated by the desire of the fast- 
flying Parrot to pick the best landing-place. A remarkable bird !* 
Whether any distinctions from the type Pezoporus have 
evolved with these island birds is a matter for speculation. Prob¬ 
ably, though, the differences, if any, are not worth bothering 
about; at any rate, not worth the lives of any of the handful ol 
Ground Parrots on the island. The species is believed to be 
stationary, which makes it likely that these island birds have 
long been isolated; but there are others on the mainland oppo¬ 
site to link them with the southern birds.f Pezoporus, by the 
way, has never been noted on that other great sandy island 
Stradbroke, off Brisbane. But Fraser Island is altogether a more 
hospitable island for birds; we were never short of entertain- 
ment there, whether in the dry swamps, the Banksia country the 
creeks and mangroves, or the semi-jungle areas, fringed with 
great eucalypts (tallow-wood and blackbutt) that rise so 
strangely from the sand. e so 
* See also Whitlock’s account of “Pezoporus” in West A„=tv Q u, 
“Emu,” vol. XIII., pp. 203-5. est Austral >a, 
f Mathews admits four sub-species without having knowledge of 
these island birds. It is interesting in this regard to quote the same 
author on the Night-Parrot. He regards the Geopsittacus as “an 
evolution product of the Pezoporine stock produced since the separa¬ 
tion of Tasmania fiom the mainland, and by the environmental stress 
of living further inland than the mainland Pezoporus.” P,ut surely 
“environmental stress” has long prevailed with isolated bodies of 
Pezoporus generally. 
