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NOTE ON THE HABITAT OF THE NAKED-EYED 

 COCKATOO, CACATITA GYMFOPIS, SOLATER. 



By Alfred J. North, F.L.S., Assistant in Ornithology, 

 Australian Museum. 



This bird was described by Dr. Sclater (P.Z.S. 1871, p. 43) 

 from a single living example at that time in the Gardens of the 

 Zoological Society. As an uncertainty exists about the true 

 habitat of this species, I embraced the opportunity of obtaining 

 all information about two living specimens, the first I have seen, 

 that are at present in one of the bird dealers' shops in the old 

 George Street Markets. I there met the owner, M. Eugene 

 Etable, a well-known collector of Australian birds, who informed 

 me that he had taken one of them from a nesting-place in the 

 hollow branch of a tree, and had captured the other when just 

 able to flutter along the ground, at a place about six miles south 

 of Burketown, in Northern Queensland. Burketown is situated 

 17° 47' S. lat. and 139° 34' E. long., on the left bank of the 

 Albert River, about 21 miles in a direct line from the Gulf of 

 Carpentaria; there this species is very common, and may frequently 

 be seen flying over the town. For the purposes of breeding it 

 resorts to the hollow limbs or trunks of trees, and deposits two 

 pure white eggs on the decaying wood or dust which these cavities 

 contain ; usually they are low down and within six feet of the 

 ground. M. Etable informs me it breeds only during the wet 

 season, and is influenced by its being early or late, the normal 

 breeding time commencing in February and continuing till the 

 beginning of May. During the dry season they assemble in large 

 flocks and remain in the neighbourhood of tanks and waterholes. 

 M. Etable hns observed these birds, but not in such great numbers, 

 as far east and south in the intervening country over which he has 

 travelled between Croydon, Hughenden and Barcaldine. 



