Page:A voyage to New Holland - Dampier.djvu/113

 rots, parakeets, flamingos, carrion-crows, chattering-crows, cockrecoes, bill-birds finely painted, corresoes, doves, pigeons, jenetees, clocking-hens, crab-catchers, galdens, currecoos, muscovy ducks, common ducks, widgeons, teal, curlews, men-of-war birds, boobies, noddies, pelicans, etc.

The yemma is bigger than a swan, grey-feathered, with a long thick sharp-pointed bill.

The carrion-crow and chattering-crows are called here mackeraws, and are like those I described in the West Indies. The bill of the chattering-crow is black, and the upper bill is round, bending downwards like a hawk's bill, rising up in a ridge almost semi-circular, and very sharp, both at the ridge or convexity, and at the point or extremity: the lower bill is flat and shuts even with it. I was told by a Portuguese here that their negro wenches make love potions with these birds. And the Portuguese care not to let them have any of these birds, to keep them from that superstition: as I found one afternoon when I was in the fields with a padre and another, who shot two of them, and hid them, as they said, for that reason. They are not good food, but their bills are reckoned a good antidote against poison.