NESTS A.VD EGGS OF AUSTRALIAN BIRDS. 



559 



Another time I lipard tlu' unmistakable notes overhead at Essendon, 

 the nitrht of one '23vd October. The week follovvins; I saw a bird 

 perched on a chiuiiiey of the dwelUug opposite to niiue in Armadale. 

 It was early moru, and no doubt the feathered visitor had just arnved 

 from a northern Ihght. Kingfishers, like other biids, sometimes 

 wander from the beaten track of their fly lines. Mr. Harry Barnard, 

 wlule collecting near the Great Bamer Reef, Queensland, saw a Sacred 

 Kingfisher alight on the ropes of his craft, evidently much exhausted, 

 then fly to a small sand-bank near, where it remained amongst a 

 number of Terns (Sterna media). 



During the breeding season these Kingfishers are exceedingly noisy, 

 and readily betray the whereabouts of their nest by uttering at 

 intruders loud screecliing cries of " cree-cree-cree." To show how the 

 domains of the Sacred Kingfi.sher have been encroached upon, I may 

 mention thai several times I took eggs from a tree where the Hawksburn 

 Railway Station now stands. The last nest I found was in the Big 

 Scnib, New South Wales. It was in the dead spout of a fallen tree. 

 Wliile standing upon the ground I could look down and just discern 

 five beautiful white eggs, reflecting the light from the entrance. 



Mr. Hermann Lau observed in Southern Queensland that the Sacred 

 Halcyon mostly deposited its clutch in tlie dark-coloured nests of the 

 tree-ants or termites. Iguanas seek like pla<"es to repose in, but of 

 coui-se first devoming the eggs or yoiuig, for which the birds will fight 

 desperately. 



With regard to the New Zealand Halcyon, which is allied to our 

 Halcyons, the late Mr. T. H. Potts has recorded the following interest- 

 ing note on the contents of a nest: — "October 10th, first egg laid; 

 second egg laid on the 12th, before 10 a.m. ; third egg laid on the 

 14th; fourth egg on the 15th; fifth egg on the 16th; sixth and last 

 egg on the 17th." Mr. Potts also ascertained that incubation lasts 

 about seventeen days, and when about twenty-fom- days old the 

 yovmg leave the nest well able to fly and follow their parents to the 

 feeding groimd. 



The New Zealand Halcyon generally breeds undergroimd. I never 

 foimd one bird so doing, but Mr. G. A. Keartland and Dr. D'Ombrain 

 tell me they have taken the Sacred Halcyons' eggs from the banks of 

 the River Yarra, notably during the season 1894, while in 1898, 

 Mr. H. E. Hill found two nests of this Kingfisher with eggs, under- 

 ground, in the Bendigo district. He caught one of the birds in the 

 timnel. 



The Sacred Kingfisher usually breeds during the months of October, 

 November and December, and occasionallv later, as Mr. G. E. Shepherd, 

 Somerville, Victoria, once took a clutch of eggs as late as the 

 4th Febi-uary (1897). In the north-west the members of the Calvert 

 expedition found it breeding during December and January, in trees 

 in the neighbourhood of the Fitzroy River, where the birds (likewise 

 their eggs) appeared smaller than those of the migrants that usually 

 go south. 



