368 



DACELONIN.?:. 



and lays five or six ejjKS. One nest containing eggs was found by the school children here in a 

 mound of earth between the forks of an uprooted tree, also near by was the nest and eggs of 

 Pavdalotus melanocephalus, of which I sent you a photograph. On two occasions I have found these 

 birds dead under the trees containing White Ants' nests, the crusts or outside of them being very 

 hard to break into, and I have no doubt that the birds killed themselves in trying to make an 

 opening. I have watched these birds starting to open the White Ants' nests, and they fly at a 

 great speed, striking the nest with their strong bills; one cannot help but wonder how they stand 

 the impact. They breed twice in each year, early in October and at the end of December. 

 The birds are chiefly migratory, arriving very early in September, a few remaining during the 



winter. The photograph I send you of 

 the Termites' nest containing nesting-site 

 of H. madcayi, was placed on the side of 

 a Broad-leaved Appletree (Angophoya 

 snhvelutina) trunk, about eight feet from 

 the ground, on the Copmanhurst and 

 Smith's Creek road ; the birds had not 

 laid." 



Mr. Robert Grant, Taxidermist of 

 the Australian Museum, has given me 

 the following notes: — "I found Halcyon 

 madeayi plentiful in the forest near the 

 coast at Cairns, Xorth-eastern Queens- 

 land, also on the table-lands on the 

 Herberton Districtfarther inland. In New 

 South Wales, these birds are common 

 on the Bellinger and Macleay Rivers, 

 and I have often seen them perched on 

 the telegraph wires near the town of 

 Kempsey. Their call may be heard very 

 early in the morning or soon after day- 

 break, and they are easy birds to approach. 

 The stomachs of the many specimens 

 I have examined contained principally 

 the remains of grasshoppers and other 

 insects, small lizards, and portions of 

 worms." 



Mr. Edwin Ashby writes me; — "Halcyon madcayi was common in the forest north of 

 Brisbane, also in the open clearings in scrub-land on the Blackall Range. The old birds were 

 feeding fledged young at the end of September; the garrulous cries of the young made one of the 

 most prominent sounds of the bird-life of the bush." 



For the purposes of breeding it usually forms a tunnel in a White Ants' nest on a tree, and 

 in an enlarged chamber at the terminus lays four or five, rarely six, rounded pearly-white 

 eggs. Sometimes the nesting-place is low down, often at an altitude of between twenty and 

 thirty feet, but seldom more than fifty or sixty feet from the ground. 



The eggs vary from four to six in number for a sitting, in New South Wales five eggs more 

 often constitute the usual complement, they are rounded in form, many specimens being abruptly 

 pointed at the smaller end, pure white, the shell being close-grained, smooth, and usually lustrous. 

 Some eggs, especially those received from Mr. J. A. Boyd, when resident at Ripple Creek, Herbert 

 River, Queensland, are coated with the reddish-brown earth of the Termites' nest, and when 



nesting-place of maclkay s kingfisher 

 termites' nest. 



