THE OCl£LLATEt> MECiAPODES. 1 87 



Lipoa ocellata, Ogilvic Grant, Cat. 13. Brit. Mus. xxii. p. 463 



(1893)- 



Adult Male and Female. — Top of the head dark brown, the 

 feathers forming a thick, pointed crest ; mantle mostly grey ; 

 back, shoulder-feathers, and wing-coverts grey, widely banded 

 with brownish-black and white ; inner secondary quills very 

 similar ; forehead and eyebrow-stripes greyish ; cheeks and 

 throat rust colour ; upper breast grey, with a band of black and 

 white feathers down the middle ; rest of under-parts whitish, 

 barred with black on the sides. Total length, 24 inches; wing, 

 12-5 ; tail, 9 ; tarsus, 3*1. 



Range.— South and West Australia. 



Habits. — Mr. Gilbert gives the following account of this hand- 

 some bird's habits : — " This morning I had the good fortune 

 to penetrate into the dense thicket I had been so long anxious 

 to visit in search of the Leipoa's eggs, and had not proceeded 

 far before the native who was with me told me to keep a good 

 look-out, as we were among the Ngou-od's hillocks ; and in half 

 an hour after we found one, around which the brush was so 

 thick that we were almost running over it before seeing it. 

 , . . He began scraping off the earth very carefully from 

 the centre, throwing it over the side, so that the mound very 

 soon presented the appearance of a huge basin ; about two feet 

 in depth of earth was in this way thrown off, when the large 

 ends of two eggs met my anxious gaze ; both these eggs were 

 resting on their smaller apex, and the earth round them had 

 to be very carefully removed to avoid breaking the shell, which 

 is extremely fragile when first exposed to the atmosphere. 

 About a hundred yards from this first mound we came upon a 

 second, rather larger, of the same external form and appear- 

 ance ; it contained three eggs. Although we saw seven or 

 eight more mounds, only these two contained eggs ; we were 

 too early ; a wxek later, and we should doubtless have found 

 many more. ... In both the nests with eggs the White 

 Ant was very numerous, making its little covered galleries of 



