Vol 'i 9 X 25 IV ‘ ] EDWARDS, Birds of a N.S.1I'. Garden 283 
A shallow pan of water put out daily for the garden birds 
will assist in checking the depredations of those which occasion¬ 
ally attack ripe fruits, as water will quench their thirst better 
than the sweet juices. With respect to the Starling and Oriole, 
however, it is different. These birds include fruits and berries 
in their natural food supply. As evidence that many birds attack 
fruit at times merely to quench their thirst, I may cite the 
example of a Tree-Creeper—a purely insectivorous bird—which 1 
observed pecking at a ripe apple left by chance on top of a 
stump in thick scrub. The day was intensely hot, and the bird 
was endeavouring to slake its thirst with juice sucked from the 
apple. 
Both Sparrow and Starling not only eat soft fruits, but assemble 
in the trees in large flocks, and incidentally knock down and 
waste far more than they eat—mulberries, for instance, often lie 
like hail beneath the trees after an invasion by these introduced 
pests. The Starling, however, being a useful destroyer of bot¬ 
flies and their larvae, and of other harmful insects, to some extent 
atones for its sins; but the useless and impertinent House Spar¬ 
row has no such good points. The Olive-backed Oriole, with 
loud, rippling call-note, arrives about November. It is a useful 
insectivorous bird on the whole, but during droughts, when native 
fruits and berries are scarce, may do a little damage in orchards 
and gardens. Among its natural food-supplies are the native 
currant, lilipili berry—a fine purple when dead ripe -and the 
native orange (so called), which has large red seeds embedded 
in capsules of rich golden yellow. 
The Oriole is particularly fond of the purple-black berries of 
the garden (not true, or “victor”) laurel, but—like the Blue jay 
(Black-faced Cuckoo-Shrike)—is partial also to ripe olives, and 
will attack these if the garden includes any of the sombre- 
foliaged trees in bearing. White-browed Wood-Swallows appear 
some summers in immense flocks, playing havoc among the 
greenish-brown chafer beetles which now annually defoliate the 
finest gum-trees in many parts of Australia. Domestic fowls also 
feed on these beetles, which, it is said, impart an unpleasant 
flavour to their eggs. In due season these Wood-Swallows build 
their careless stick nests in trees, shrubs, stump hollows, etc., rear 
their young, and then migrate elsewhere. One enterprising and 
exceptionally trustful couple built their nest in a camelia shrub 
within three or four yards of the writer’s front door step. These 
slate-grey birds and also their first cousins, the Dusky Wood- 
Swallows, which are stationary in habit, do splendid service in 
checking the increase of chafer beetles and of a hairy caterpillar 
which infests grape vines and cultivated creepers. From this 
loathsome grub springs a purple moth with rounded spots of 
cream colour, and on this, too,, the Wood-Swallows prey. 
Whistlers, Rufous and Golden-breasted, haunt my garden, and 
in early spring trill their sweet love-song, which is so different 
from the ordinary call-notes. They nest occasionally in a 
