Page:The Emu volume 2.djvu/84

 113. (Brandt), Little Black Cormorant.

Phalacrocorax sulcirostris, Gould, Birds Aust., fol., vol. vii., pl. 67 (1848); Ogilvie-Grant, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus,, vol. xxvi., p. 376 (1898).

One unsexed skin, November, 1901.

This skin is light brown practically all over the body, tending to blackish-brown on the flanks and rump. The oily green colour, except on the rump and upper tail coverts, is wanting. Where the feathers should be ash in the middle and margined by a black band they are brown in the middle with a lighter brown as a margin. It could safely be called the Little Brown Cormorant.

following notes and observations relate to birds secured or seen by the writer on two short expeditions made by him in the month of October and at Christmastide of last year, and in that portion of the south-west division of Western Australia known as the Margaret River, and particularly a strip of country having for its northern limit Cowaramup Brook and its southern limit the Margaret River. The first expedition occupied 14 days, and the last five days.

The nature of the country was of a diversified character, consisting firstly, on the immediate littoral, of high limestone hills, covered with sand and clothed on their summits and ocean faces with dwarf scrubs, knee-high, and, behind and between those hills, of sheltered gullies or pockets carrying "stinkwood," dryandra, and peppermint scrubs; secondly, of a narrow tract of lower, flat, sandy, moist country, carrying "red gums," banksia, tea-tree, and "blackboys" (grass-trees); and, thirdly, of granite and ironstone ranges, bearing jarrah trees. Intersecting the whole at irregular intervals were brooks taking their sources in these ranges and flowing either openly to the sea or hiding their identity underground, and eventually issuing out of the high sea cliffs and thence reaching the ocean through narrow and limited fertile flats. Along the course and in the vicinity of the brooks (except where they came within the direct influence of the ocean winds) were belts of the gigantic clean-limbed karri trees, with patches of "willow" and other scrubs undergrowing. The limited brook flats carried a burden of sage-bush, blister-bush, and other low-growing scrubs.

Each class of country had its feathered denizens peculiar to it, although, needless to say, many avi-faunal forms were, speaking in a limited sense, cosmopolitan.

For example, the dwarf coastal scrubs furnished ideal and