of originality.  He has become so confiding that he will perch on the gatepost as one enters, assuming a fierce and resentful aspect, and he will play “hawk” to the startled fowls.  He eats the eggs of other birds and kills chicks; but his murderous instincts are rarely exhibited, and then only, perhaps, when his passions are aroused.  He does not (as far as my observation goes) kill for food, but merely because Nature gives him at certain times and seasons a fiery, jealous disposition, and a truculent determination to protect his family.

“Go-bidger-roo!”

As the sun shines over the range, the plaintive cooing of the little blue dove, such as picked the rice grains from the bowl beside rapt Buddha’s hands, comes up from among the scented wattles on the flat, the gentlest and meekest of all the converse of the birds.  The nervous yet fluty tones are as an emphatic a contrast to the vehement interjections and commands of the varied honey-cater (PTILOTIS versicolor)—­now at the first outburst—­as is the swiftly foreshortening profile of the range to the glare in which all the foreground quivers.

Once aroused, the varied honey-eater is wide awake.  His restlessness is equalled only by his impertinent exclamations.  He shouts his own aboriginal title, “Go-bidger-roo!” “Put on your boots!” “Which—­which-which way-which way-which way you go!” “Get your whip!” “Get your whip!” “You go!” “You go!” “None of your cheek!” “None of your cheek!” “Here-here!” And darts out with a fluster from among the hibiscus bushes on the beach away up to the top of the melaleuca tree; pauses to sample the honey from the yellow flowers of the gin-gee, and down to the scarlet blooms of the flame tree, across the pandanus palms and to the shady creek for his morning bath and drink, shouting without ceasing his orders and observations.  He is always with us, though not always as noisy as in the prime of the year—­a cheerful, prying, frisky creature, always going somewhere or doing something in a red-hot hurry, and always making a song of it—­a veritable babbler.  His love-making is passionate and impulsive, joyous almost to rowdyism.

BULLY, SWAGGERER, SWASHBUCKLER

The drongo shrike is another permanent resident; glossy black, with a metallic shimmer on the shoulders, long-tailed, sharp of bill and masterful.  He has a scolding tongue, and if a hawk hovers over the bloodwoods he tells without hesitation of the evil presence.  He is the bully of the wilderness of leaves, bouncing birds vastly his superior in fighting weight and alertness of wing, and clattering his jurisdiction to everything that flies.  When the nest on the nethermost branch of the Moreton Bay ash is packed with hungry brood, his industry is exhilarating.  Ordinarily he gets all the food he wants by merely a superficial inspection; but with a family to provide for, he is compelled to fly around, shrewdly examining every likely looking locality.  Clinging to the bark of the bloodwood, with tail spread out fan-wise as additional support, he searches every interstice, and ever and anon flies to the Moreton Bay ash, and tears off the curling fragments of crisp bark which afford concealment to the smaller beetles, grubs and spiders.