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Updated: June 9, 2025
All round the hut was a large clearing, planted with maize, belonging to a Filipino, who from time to time lived in another small hut about one hundred yards away. Tall gaunt trees rose out of the corn on all sides, and in the early morning they were full of bird-life parrots, parakeets, cockatoos, pigeons, woodpeckers, gapers and hornbills, etc.
We shall be pretty sure to see in the woods of Victoria a most curious example of bird-life and bird-instinct, in the instance of what is known as the bower-bird. This peculiar little creature builds a cunning play-house, a tiny shady bower which it ornaments with vines and highly colored feathers of other birds, besides the yellow blossoms of the wattle-tree and many light-green ferns.
As the westering sun sank out of sight beyond the mountains these sounds of bird-life gradually died away. Under the great pines the evening was still with the silence of primeval desolation. The sense of sadness and loneliness, the melancholy of the wilderness, came over me like a spell.
Meanwhile one has missed a dozen charming scenes in bird-life, and a chance to make acquaintances worth more than the gratification of that curiosity.
Pheasants, grouse, Hungarian Partridges, Quail, Ducks, and some other species of birds highly esteemed as food, the object of this being to restock covers that had been depleted of bird-life by excessive shooting, or to supply new attraction for field-sports in regions where other game was limited.
Thus law, custom, public sentiment, climate, soil, and production, all combine to give bird-life a development in England that it attains in no other country. In no other land is it so multitudinous and musical; in none is there such ample and varied provision for housing and homing it. Every field is a great bird's- nest.
Upon the narrow stony strip of comparatively level ground the sun's rays fell with concentrated ardour, and along it was a brilliant bloom of late summer flowers of camomile, St. John's wort, purple loosestrife, hemp-agrimony and lamium. At almost every step there was a rustle of a lizard or a snake. The melancholy cry of the hawk was the only sound of bird-life.
These birds are principally cormorants and pelicans. There are also very many seals, and we saw some whales. These islands presented one of the most marvellous sights I ever saw. And what enormous, still undeveloped, fisheries there must be here to support this bird-life. To-day we also passed a field of "Red Sea," confervæ or infusoria.
In bird-life, especially, where love is so vital a part of their life, and so beautifully expressed, monogamy is the rule, and in some species, like that of the robin, a certain aristocracy seems to exist, preventing intercourse with any other family. The robin will mate only with a robin, and not infrequently mates for life; which is to say that should one die, the other refuses to mate again.
The wing-fingers have gone, and the tail is much shortened, but the grooved teeth and loosely jointed jaws still point back to a reptilian ancestry. These are the only remains of bird-life that we find in the Mesozoic rocks.
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