Why have we no residential parrot, though cockatoos are plentiful; no
scrub turkey though the megapode scampers in all directions in the
jungle; no common black crow, nor butcher bird, though other shrikes (the
magpie for instance) come and go; no wren, no finch, no lark? Scrub
turkeys (TALLEGALLA LATHAMI), mound builders like the megapode, are
plentiful all along the coast, at certain seasons visiting the scrub
which margins the opposite beach, but they are not found on these
islands. The blue mountain parrot (red-collared lorikeet), the red-winged
lory, the black cockatoo (Leach's), and other well-known species, fleet
and venturesome, to whom two miles and a half of "salt, estranging sea"
cannot be any check, certainly do not use the island for nesting as birds
of "innocent and quiet minds" might. Gauze-winged butterflies flit across
the channel, occasionally in great numbers. What law restrains virile
birds from the venture?
The absence among the residents of swimming birds, save the beach
frequenters, is due to the lack of open fresh water, though there are
indications of the past existence of at least one swamp, and also that it
was drained naturally by the fretting away of a sand ridge by the sea.
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