Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/50

 34 The only other animals you meet with usually, are, the opossum, the kangaroo-rat, lizards, rats and mice, the rat not much larger than the English mouse; they are abundant and mischievous.

I have heard of emus; and have seen wild turkeys, cockatoos, parrots, pigeons, quails, pies, jays, hawks, black swans, pelicans, and a number of other birds.

This day I shot a duck. There are two kinds of them; one of which, the wood duck, alights on trees. The white cockatoos are very numerous, and now feed upon the flower of the red gum tree, which lately came into blossom. There are three or four species of the cockatoo, white, black, grey, and black with a red tail. The parrots are small and green, the neck ornamented with a gold ring. The pigeons are beautiful, with a bronze-coloured wing. Many birds have singular calls or cries, and our crow makes a most dismal noise, terminated by a long doleful cry. The white cockatoo screams like a clucking hen disturbed from her nest, and the black one whines like a discontented pug dog. There is a bird called here the robin, like our own in its habits of familiarity, but its plumage is much more beautiful; a thrush resembling the field fare; a small bird the size of a wren, but of splendid ultramarine colour. There are many other varieties, but I have not time to enumerate them.

Fish abound in the river, but without a net of peculiar construction (a trammel net) it is not easy to catch them—I have taken a few perch, however, one small turtle, and shell fish like the clam.

The climate in summer, in the middle of the day, is very warm; most agreeable in the morning and evening, cool and pleasant at night, sometimes even cold as it approaches morning. In winter, notwithstanding what has been said of it, I am told the weather is delightful—a moderate warmth during the day, and the night so cold as to make you enjoy a fire; the rains only occasional, and not of long duration.