Page:Extracts from the letters and journals of George Fletcher Moore.djvu/73

 Rh The kangaroo has supplied food to many who were prudent or fortunate enough to provide themselves with proper dogs, such as strong greyhounds, which are here expensive and difficult to be procured, a good one costing more than £15. 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