Country Life and Sport
GOI.DFINCHF.S AT CANBERRA.
The authorities of Kew Gardens, who recently sent out willows to clothe the bareness of a wind-scarred island, have despatched a selection of our most English trees to adorn the spacious and gracious hill that will be the metropolis of Australia. It is good work ; and the trees will be welcome to more than the human inhabitants. Of the many things that delighted my eyes in New South Wales—from the Blue Mountains to " Willie Wagtail "—none was more surprising than a company of goldfinches. At a charming homestead near Canberra I sat for hours tee'd up in the concealing boughs of a conifer in which, among many other birds, our European goldfinches, very conspicuous with the red-capped head and gold-streaked wing, foregathered. It was a queer com- bination, this little bright and most English bird feeding almost alongside a great white cockatoo with yellow crest, who had a genius for splitting the cases of almond-nuts growing in great profusion on a neighbouring tree. Birds and trees from Europe both flourish there. After all, the climate is not different from ours in all respects. Canberra is 2,000 feet up, and feels the grip of frost on occasion, though, of course, suspicions of the tropics are also wafted across it, and the region is very dry and sunny by our English standard.
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