I.EUCOSARCIA. 



153 



thirty or"Jorty yards before settling, and remain .luite motionless. I have found its nests 

 and eggs all the year round, more especially in early sprmg and autumn, and have taken eggs 

 on the 29th July, 25th August, loth September, loth November, loth and 22nd December, and 

 saw young in nest on nth April. The nest is a fairly substantial structure as Pigeon's nests go 

 in the forest country. I have found them placed in Bloodwood, Ironbark and Apple trees, but 

 the builders have a preference for Oak and Honeysuckle, from ten to thirty feet from the ground ; 

 two eggs are laid for a sitting. I have seen this Pigeon leave its nest with young, and flutter 

 along to lead one away from them, .\bout Copmanhurst it is shy, and generally well able to 

 take care of itself. The Hesh is white and good eating." 



Mr. Robt. Grant gave me the following notes ;— " I have shot numbers of Wonga Pigeons 

 in the Wolgan Valley, near Wallerawang, in the Blue Mountains; also on Cambewarra 

 Mountain, in the Shoalhaven District, and on the Bellinger and Nambucca Rivers, in the 

 North-coastal Districts of New South Wales. I mostly obtained my specimens by sitting down 

 quietly and imitating their whooping notes, when they would come running up to me ; many, 

 too, I secured alive by trapping. In company with Mr. E. J. Cairn specimens were also 

 obtained in the neighbourhood of Boar Pocket, about twenty miles inland from Cairns. North- 

 eastern Queensland." 



From Melbourne, Victoria, Mr. G. A. Keartland wrote:— -The Wonga Pigeon is the 

 largest wild Pigeon found in Victoria. I have seen young ones just able to lly in the month of 

 January. The Plenty Ranges and the hilly country at Hedi, near Wangaratta, are the only 

 places in which I have shot them. They are shy birds, and keep well in the scrub when feeding 

 on the ground, and when in the trees they remain hidden in the dense foliage for a long time 

 without moving." 



The figure on the opposite pa^e is reproduced from a photograph taken by me at Ourimbah, 

 on the gth November, 1901. This beautiful bit of virgin brush, in which the Cabbage Palm 

 (Livistona austvalis), the rare Tree Fern (Alsoplnla coopm ), the Bird's-nest Fern (Asplcnium nidus), 

 and Stag-horn Fern (Plalyu-riiiiii aliiconii-) flourished and i;rew to an immense size, was only 

 about four hundred yards from the railway line. It was the haunt not only of the Wonga, but 

 theTop-knotand the Little Green-winced Pigeon, Cat-bird, Regent Bower-bird, Satin Bower- 

 bird, the Black-faced and Black-fronted Fly-catcher, Lewin's Honey-eater, Farge-biUed and 

 Yellow-throated Scrub Wren, Rose-breasted Robin, Lyre-bird and other brush-frequenting 

 species that are needless to here enumerate. All this vegetation has now been felled, burnt and 

 cleared, and the land devoted chiefly to fruit-growing purposes. A saw mill has also been 

 erected, for it is timber-getters country. 



The nest is an open, nearly flat or sliglitly cupped structure, formed externally of sticks and 

 twigs, coarser outside, finer in the lining. They are variable in size, some being thickly and 

 compactly built, others frail and of scanty structure, an average nest measuring eleven inches 

 in external diameter by three inches and a half in depth. The smallest nest I have seen was 

 one found by " Cobby," an aboriginal, during my stay at Copmanhurst, on the loth November, 

 1898. It was built at the junction of a thick fork of a horizontal branch of a Rough-barked 

 Apple-tree (Angoplwva subvclntina ), and was barely six inches in diameter, formed of a few frail 

 twigs, and contained two recently hatched young. Any suitable tree is selected as a nesting 

 site! but generally the horizontal branch oi a Emuilyptns, Aui^oplwra. Banksin or Casuanna, at a 

 height varying usually from twelve to thirty feet from the ground, and occasionally at an altitude 

 of forty feet. Mr. H. R. Elvery also records it nesting in vines, and Mr. G. Savidge has found 

 nests built in mistletoes. 



The eggs are two in number, varying from an elongate-oval to an ellipse in form, pure 

 white, the shell being close-grained, smooth and slightly lustrous. A set of two taken by Mr. 

 39 



