Page:The Emu volume 9.djvu/266

 (Amytornis gigantura, Milligan).—This was another Lake Austin friend I hoped to meet with at Lake Way. I was not disappointed. It is a most difficult bird to find, especially if the weather be windy or wet and cold. As at Lake Austin, it was strictly confined to the salt-bush near the lake. This family of birds is said to favour rocky or stony places. It may be true of other members, but I never saw the present species in any such country. Though there were outcrops of rocks near two of its haunts at Lake Austin, and again a huge outcropping quartz reef at Lake Way, I never saw an individual amongst the debris surrounding these formations. The species of salt-bush it prefers grows to a height of about 3 feet. The leaf is very small and sappy, and at fruiting season it has a small bright red berry, which is not unpleasant to the taste. When bruised the leaves have a scent like common garden sage. These bushes always grow singly, and generally on rich alluvial flats, but also on low sand-hills.

I can give no hints as to how to find this bird. One may pay visit after visit and spend hours in its haunts without seeing more than its tracks. Another day one may walk right up to the bush it is skulking under, but it does not follow that the Amytornis will break cover. If it has a song it seldom utters it. The call note is faint and very high-pitched, but both at Lake Austin and Lake Way I heard individuals utter a sound precisely like the mew of a cat. The female is much more wary than the male, and one seldom gets more than a glimpse of her as she bounds from bush to bush. On a single occasion, the weather being calm and genial, I had the exceptional opportunity of seeing three of these Grass-Wrens at the same moment. I knew a party was about, and at the expenditure of some patience and artifice I enticed them around me. One hopped to the top of a salt-bush, another came out in the open, and even began pecking about whilst a third took a series of peeps at me from behind another bush. From the large size of their tails I judged all these to be males. The male, too, shows no rufous patches at the side of the breast.

I was very anxious to secure the nest and eggs of this little-known Grass-Wren. It was only after much labour I was successful. Knowing that a party inhabited a certain tract of salt-bush at the foot of some sand-hills, I resolved to "stick to my covey" and concentrate my efforts on this bit of country alone. In addition to the salt-bush there were many clumps of spinifex on the sand-hills, and I resolved to carefully search them too. I tried all sorts of methods. Wherever I saw the birds about, there I examined every salt-bush on hands and knees, and many a disappointment I got—dark-looking domed nests in the centre of the bush either proving to be Tœniopygia nests or old nests of Pyrrholæmus brunnea.

It was not till 23rd August that I had any luck. I had been through nearly all the salt-bush, and had been beating the clumps of spinifex with a stick, when I came to a few dense salt-bushes near the belt of tea-tree and other scrub bordering the big lagoon at Lake Violet. I parted with my hands all salt-bushes that the light did not penetrate through, and had almost come to the last one when in the centre of a fairly large bush I found a perfect cup-shaped nest containing three remarkable and beautiful eggs. I was puzzled. I was expecting a domed nest with the entrance at the side. Here was a substantial cup-shaped nest of dried grasses and green shoots of salt-bush, with very thick walls and a fairly deep cup, lined with finer grasses, vegetable down, and even a little fur. The shape of this nest is remarkable when compared with that of its near ally, A. striatus. The eggs, too, were unfamiliar. I listened to the song or call note of every bird around me. Xerophila was there, also Artamus venustus, and the eggs did resemble certain varieties of the latter, but they were much too large, and the nest was totally unlike a Wood-Swallow's. I listened again. Then I heard the faint, high-pitched alarm note of Amytornis gigantura. The problem was solved, but I had to make identity sure. I sat down within