Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/59

40 their swallow being extended when meeting with some tit-bit rather larger than usual; we expect they are pretty well gorged now from the indifference with which they regard us, and our endeavours to get them on the wing. There too in addition to the White Ibis and the Dotterel, which we have mentioned previously as frequenting the Warrnambool Coast, we have the Sooty Oyster Catcher, (Hæmotopus fuliginosus) from Lake Connewarre, and the delicate Greenshank (Glottis glottoides.) We can scarcely particularise the species of Ducks which occasionally wheel over our heads as we progress, but we have seen near the Lakes, the Mountain, the Black, the Teal, the pretty pink-eyed (Malacorhynchus membranaceus) (Sow,) the Shoveler, and many more. Look through this glass now at that group of silvery-breasted Grebes (Podiceps) gliding along the surface of the water as they alight; out of the water they are (except on the wing) perfectly helpless, only standing with great difficulty; but once in their own natural element, their broad oar-like lobed feet enable them to swim and dive with great facility; a specimen of the lesser Grebe ornaments our shelves, presented by a friend who had picked it up under the light-house at Queenscliff, against which it had flown, and by its side, standing about nineteen inches high is the very beautiful Stone Curlew, (Œdicnemus grallarius), whose brilliant dark markings looming out from its light cinereous plumage, render it a prize to the Ornithologist,—let him look for it here!!

But to work, yet let us first remark to our readers, (as we should have done earlier), no matter of what