Birds from the Bush
Both water and fire, those excellent servants, may prove disastrous to birds as to men. We saw last year the ruin of the best of all bird sanctuaries due to the incursion of the sea into Norfolk Broads and flats. The sea water, besides its more apparent offences, killed all the available food from fish to worms and insects. Much more fathl results followed the bush fires in Australia. Some very pitiful accounts of the sufferings of birds from both hunger and thirst reach me. Some birds had enormous feasts as they fell upon the host of insects driven out of cover by the fires ; but this was their last carouse, and the subsequent mortality was terrible, though it would have been very much worse if the threat had not touched the hospitable genius of Australia. Bird cafés were set up here, there and everywhere ; and there was a boom in the sale of bird baths, in spite of the difficulty of filling them adequately during the worst of the drought. A number of curious observations were made. The birds (which are an adaptable race) often changed their habits of feeding—the flesh-eaters became fruit-eaters, and such a change was noted especially in the kooka-burra, that loud and hilarious member of the kingfisher family. Small birds would attend closely on rather bigger birds, such as the lyre birds, which were strong enough to turn over stones or reveal other lurking places of insects.
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