AUSTRALIAN BIRDS.
(To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."'
may interest some of your readers to know that I heard the thrash for the first time this season, about 8 a.m., on June 3rd—Sing George's birthday. His song was sweet but weak, as though he were afraid of the sound of his own voice. He will sing now right through the winter with the thermometer sometimes down to 30 degrees during the night, earlier and louder each week, until in the springtime he nearly bursts his little throat with ecstasy, then through the summer months until some time in February or March he will take a well-earned rest. With us in Victoria, as I think with you, he is the .first bird to awaken in the spring, between three and four a.m. Then the blackbird follows, and after they have sung a duet the doves and sparrows (or sparrows and doves—I am not quite sure of their order) join in, and last of all the Indian minah, with his loud, rather harsh, chirping, completes the choir. We live about four miles out of Mel- bourne, and the garden with its large trees is a paradise for the birds. During the summer the thrush is the last bird to sing at night. He sits on the topmost bough of a tall pine tree opposite our front door and sings his evening song "twice over" about eight o'clock. We have na long twilight here; it is dark at nine o'clock even on the hottest summer days, so that our songsters go to bed earlier than in England, but the thrush more than compensates for that by singing during at least nine months of the year.—I am, Sir, &c., A. M. B. Kew, Victoria, Australia, Tune 10th, 1912.
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