Page:The Emu volume 3.djvu/48

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
36
Littler, Notes on Sonic Birds Peculiar to Tasmania.
[ Emu 1st July

under and over the fallen timber. The powers of flight are rather feeble, and only resorted to when moving from one locality to another, or when suddenly frightened. It prefers to trust to its legs. The song is weak, but is a rather pleasing run of notes, uttered usually when perched on some eminence.




Birds Occurring in the Region of the North-West Cape.

By Thomas Carter.

Part I.

Having resided at Point Cloates (a spur projecting at the base of the North-West Cape Peninsula) for thirteen years, the following list of birds may be regarded as tolerably complete, though, doubtless, there are occasional visitors, and perhaps even resident species, yet to be recorded. As my residence there has drawn to an end, I have made the following notes (collected, say, within a radius of 100 miles of the Point), trusting they may be of interest to other field naturalists, and also perhaps of value as a record of a hitherto unworked locality. Although Mr. Robert Hall always refers to this district as western, I think it undoubtedly should be considered as north-west, so many birds occurring there being also found here, while none of the true south-west forms are met with. Mr. Bernard Woodward's chart, in his guide to the Perth (W.A.) Museum, divides this colony into three divisions, the boundary between the N. W. and S.W. being near the Murchison River, about where many S.W. forms seem to find their northern limit, as the White-tailed Cockatoo (Calptorhynchus baudini) and Magpie (Gymnorhina dorsalis). I speak from personal experience, having traversed the country through to the vicinity of Albany.

Point Cloates is one of the most westerly points of Australia, and, as will be seen from the following notes, is splendidly situated for observing the movements of the Limicolae (Plovers, &c.) The country immediately off the beach is formed of high loose sandhills with short scrub, which, in some hollows sheltered from the prevailing heavy south-west winds, forms rather dense patches of thicket, where such birds as the Wedgebill (Sphenostoma), Pied (Entomophila leucomelas) and Spiny-cheeked Honey-eaters (Acanthogenys rufigularis), Robins, Wrens (Maluri), and Redthroats (Pyrrholcemus) find food and shelter. Behind these sandhills, which attain a height of nearly 200 feet, is open undulating "downs" country, almost destitute of bush, but clothed with grass, annual plants, and several varieties of spinifex (Triodia). This extends about 15 miles eastward, when the typical inland N.W. country, with clay flats, thickets, grassy plains, and creeks fringed with eucalypts (white gum or flooded gum of the interior) is met with. Two miles N.E. from the homestead a stony range