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They all passed away simultaneously in a single day; the line of migration being directly to the N.W., from which quarter we had small flights of ducks and pelicans. On the 5th of March I sent Mr.

Time was when North Island was given over to the gulls and long-billed pelicans, and San Diego valued it chiefly as a natural bulkhead that made the bay a placid harbor where the great combing rollers could not ride. But other birds came; great, roaring, man-made birds, that rose whirring from its barrenness and startled the gulls until they grew accustomed to the sight and sound of them.

Among the shoals and sand banks of the coast, they saw many large birds, and some in particular of the same kind which they had seen in Botany Bay. These they judged to be pelicans, but they were so shy as never to come within reach of a musket. On the shore was found a species of the bustard, one of which was shot that was equal in size to a turkey, weighing seventeen pounds and a half.

I turned my horse to the left, and struck upon a long sheet of water, from which I startled a number of pelicans. It was evident that the natives had recently been in the neighbourhood, but we thought it probable they might have been a hunting party, who had returned again to the plains.

The blue sky sparkled over us every day; now and then we met a little solitary craft; countless water-fowl were scattered about on the surface of the stream; a school of mullet was usually jumping into the air; an alligator might sometimes be seen steadily swimming across the river, with only his nose and back exposed; and nearly always, either to the right or to the left, going north or going south, were seven pelicans, slowly flopping through the air.

XI. Of acquired knowledge; of foxes, rooks, fieldfares, lapwings, dogs, cats, horses, crows, and pelicans. XII. Of birds of passage, dormice, snakes, bats, swallows, quails, ringdoves, stare, chaffinch, hoopoe, chatterer, hawfinch, crossbill, rails and cranes. XIII. Of birds nests; of the cuckoo; of swallows nests; of the taylor bird.

Many of the birds which find their food at sea, or in the waters of stream and lake, repair to the trees for the purpose of building their nests among the branches. Such birds are the pelicans, herons, ibises, and ospreys; while the wood ducks lay their eggs high above the ground in the hollows of trees.

The voyage presents no incidents but the usual ones of pelicans, alligators, and porpoises: and on January 15, he arrived at Dhacca, "the once famous city of muslins."

The ill omened gaflinaso was sailing and circling round the hut, and the tall flamingo was stalking on the shallows of the lagoon, the haunt of the disgusting alligator, that lay beneath, divided from the sea by a narrow mud bank, where a group of pelicans, perched on the wreck of one of our boats, were pluming themselves before taking wing.

But here, too, my quest was vain, for nowhere could I detect the slightest signs of life, except that of birds, a few gulls and pelicans being visible, busily engaged in seeking a breakfast on the waters of the lagoon, while it was also possible to detect the occasional flash of wings among the trees that so thickly clustered on the slopes of the island.