Vol .i 924 ' IV ‘ J GOGERLEY, Breeding of Ground Parrot. 
33 
hut 1 was almost sure that they were the nests of Ground- 
Parrots. Mr. Jackson thought not, but he said he had never 
seen the nest of Pezoporus wallicus, and could not say for certain 
what the nests were. 
In November, 1923, I determined to make another search 
around the small swamp, as we had narrowed the field of search 
to that one locality; but l did not entertain much hope, owing 
to the fact that a new road had been formed across the moor, 
and that the teams drawing the gravel and metal had cut the 
place up in all directions. But after a hunt of hours over the 
other parts of the moor, I decided to try the swamp, cut up as 
it was. Imagine my delight when, close to where we had seen 
the nest of the year before, which had been destroyed by a 
cart wheel, I flushed a Ground-Parrot from a nest which contained 
three eggs, The bird flew only a few yards, and I was able to 
identify it easily; the orange spot on the forehead being very 
conspicuous, also the yellow and black bars. I had not the heart 
to shoot the lovely little bird to obtain the skin. 
I then searched further down the swamp, and discovered a 
second nest, with two eggs. This nest was rather different 
from the first in shape. But this, I imagine, was owing to its 
being placed close to a small paper-bark tree, in a thick bunch 
of rushes. It was rather dark, and made a bad subject for 
photographing, whereas the first nest was in a bed of rushes 
and asparagus fern, and was fairly open to the light, as the 
photograph shows. A remarkable fact was that the birds of 
the second nest had carried about twenty stems of asparagus 
fern for fifty yards or more to place at the back of the nest. 
The discovery of the birds and nests shows that some birds of 
this species still exist on the Peninsula. But I fancy that there 
are only a few pairs of the birds left, and that in a few years 
they will certainly disappear. As Mr. Ashby says, the wild cats 
and bush fires are responsible for their becoming extinct. The 
bush fires are, I think, the main factor in destroying our ground 
birds, and, as the fires occur every year, the birds have no chance. 
Evidently the blacks were careful with fires in their time, as the 
bush thirty years ago showed no signs of the ravages of fires, 
whereas the bush in most localities has been completely altered 
by fires during the last thirty years. While searching tlie burnt 
areas, I saw many nests of Swamp Quail and Rails, with many 
burnt shells and bones of young birds, so that one can imagine 
how many birds are destroyed during a big fire on open heath 
or plain country. 
The Ground-Parrot must have been distributed over much of 
Australia, as is proved by the species being taken in Western 
Australia, South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, and 
Queensland. 
