Letters, Announcements, &^c. 107 



SiRS^ — We have to chronicle, since we last wrote, the ad- 

 dition of three birds to the ornithology of New Caledonia. 

 This time they are, we think, known species ; at least we 

 identify them as such. 



When we first came to Noumea we at once detected that 

 among the common Swiftlets that fly about the outskirts of 

 the town there occasionally appears a smaller and a brighter- 

 coloured bird. We identified the former (on the wing) with 

 Collocalia sjmdiopygia of Fiji, which it exactly resembled ; but 

 lately, having obtained specimens, we saw at once that they 

 differed from it in being much brighter-coloured, and not so 

 smoky on the underparts and rump-patch. They are also 

 somewhat larger, the wing being half an inch longer. This 

 bird we now believe to be C leucopygia. Wall. 



What, then, were the white-bellied ones ? They had then dis- 

 appeared; but having again come to the front, we have lately 

 shot some of them, and find that they accord exactly with Gray's 

 figure and description in the ' Voyage of the Cura9oa ' of 

 C. uropygialis. Gray says " this bird has hitherto only been 

 obtained in the New Hebrides (Aneiteum) ." The distance is 

 not very great, and a mere bagatelle to a bird of such power 

 of sving as a Swift. We find that though they occasionally 

 hawk after small insects in company with the other species, 

 they in general keep more to the edge of the forest, and 

 among the scattered gum-trees. We fancy that they must 

 be migratory, as during the summer months we did not 

 observe them ; they are now (May) pretty numerous, but 

 local. 



Leopold Layard has started a canoe, there being no recre- 

 ation here but " drinking-bars,'' billiards, and gambling ; and 

 one evening, returning from a cruise to some islands ofJ 

 Ansevata, he reported that he had found Charadrius fulvus 

 breeding on a small sand-patch, the parent bird being fol- 

 lowed by a pair of downy chicks, and that he had seen a flock 

 of very minute Terns, which were quite new to him. 



Next day he went after them with his gun, and returned 

 with a specimen (the only one then to be found) of Stermda 

 nereis, Gould, a female, with the head speckled. This, as far 



