Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/248

Rh trusted to his great tameness alone to retain him about the house. "Dicky," as we called him, did not sufficiently appreciate this sacrifice to friendship, and after having lived with us long enough to have become, in his way, quite a little celebrity, he watched his opportunity and flew off irrecoverably.

It might have been supposed that a land so abundant in parroquets would have also been prolific in parrots, but a delicate little race of grass-green birds not larger than a hen linnet, represented, I believe, the only kind of true parrot in Western Australia. In a cage these diminutive parrots, (for which the native name is Kower,) are very difficult to rear, but, as they seem to be of the love-bird species, it is possible that the unsuccessful attempt which we made to bring up a single specimen might have had a different result had we experimented on a pair. There were not wanting birds of a soberer hue that reminded us of feathered friends at home. Plenty of sooty-backed crows contrasted with the gay colours of the parroquets, and the pretty little Silver Tongue, which made havoc with our ripe pomegranates and pecked out the seeds with its long slender bill, was not unlike a small thrush.

But the two kinds of birds about whose identity there could be no dispute were the wagtails and swallows; the former bird being known by his provincial English name of "dish-washer," as if he had been a poor relation of the genteel wagtails at home. This bird's short song, consisting of the words, "Pretty creature, pretty creature," pronounced with the greatest distinctness, was repeated by him all day long from the first peep of dawn, as if