CALYPTOKIIVNCHUS. 



71 



Park and I'icton. It is common in the hea\ily timbered ranges of the Illawarra I)istrict and 

 on the Blue Mountains, and the open forest lands further inland. At Wambangalanf,' Station, 

 about twenty miles from I )ubbo, and about two hundred and ninety miles west of Sydney, Mr. 

 E. H. Lane found it breeding on many occasions during his long residence there. In Marcti, 

 1891, he forwarded me, with the eggs of this species, an adult female in the flesh shot near a 

 nesting-place in a hollow trunk of a dead Box-tree. Farther north in New South Wales, I 

 observed it in the I'pper Clarence Pistrict in November, i.S().S, where Mr. G. Savidge has found 

 it breeding, and I have also noted it in different parts of \'ictoria. 



Leach's Black Cockatoo is remarkable fijr individual variation m plumage, and, from the 

 material now before me, especially in the females. Some adult females are sparingly dotted and 

 spotted with yellow on the sides of the head and upper and under wing-coverts, the feathers of 

 the abdomen have narrow, and the under tail-coverts broad, yellow crossbars. Others have the 

 feathers on the throat yellow, margined with oran,u;e, in some this yellow colouring extends to 

 portion of the head and hind-neck, and in one abnormally plimiaged specimen has one of the 

 (juills entirely yellow and washed with orange on the central portion of the outer web, the others 

 being parti-coloured yellow and black, while the apical portion of the outer web of one of the 

 inner secondaries has a long wedge-shaped golden-yellow marking, narrowly edged at the tip 

 with orange-red. In the males the \ermillion band on the middle of all but the central pair of 

 tail-feathers crosses both webs, but more often it is narrowly edged with black on both webs, 

 sometimes the outer web of the external feather on either side is entirely black. 



Seeds of the different species of Casiiniiiuis, obtained by the birds biting through the cones, 

 constitute its favourite food. 



Like the other species of the genus, it resorts to a hollow limb, trunk, or stump of a tree, 

 for the purposes of breeding, and only one egg is laid for a sitting. .\11 the nesting-places found 

 by Mr. E. 1 1. Lane in New South Wales were from about twenty to forty feet from the ground, 

 while those found by Mr. II. G. Barnard in (Queensland were at an altitude of from seventy to 

 eighty feet. 



From I;!imbi, Ihiaringa, Oueensland, Mr. li. Greensill Barnard wrote me as lollows on the 

 22nd January, lyog : — " In May and June of i.Syi and 1892 we found several nests of Calyptov- 

 hynchus viiidis, the breeding places being similar to those of C. fniurctis, with the exception that we 

 never took more than one egg out of a nest, and about six nests in all were found. These birds 

 were very partial to the seeds of the 'Belar' or Scrub Oak {Casiiarimi sp.j, which they cracked 

 open with their powerful bills and extracted the kernel. I have not seen these birds for some 

 years now." 



Mr. E. }\. Lane, of Orange, New South Wales, has kindly sent me the following notes: — 

 " The first nest of Calyptorhynchns viridis I found was on Wambangalang Station, about twenty 

 miles from Dubbo, on the 21st March, 1879. As the tree was ten miles from the homestead, 

 and I could not climb it without a rope, and was leaving home the next day for nearly a fortnight, 

 I lost the opportunity of seeing the contents of this the first nest I ever found of this species. 

 About a fortnight later I got up to another nest, but only found broken pieces of shell, the egg 

 probably having been eaten by one of the numerous Lace Lizards, as I now think it was too early 

 in the season for the young to have left the nest. Having learned so much, I was able to find 

 six nests during March, April and May of the following year, each of which contained but one 

 egg or one young one. .All the nests were from about twenty to forty odd feet from the ground, 

 and always in the main trunk of the trees, where a large branch had broken ofT, or where the 

 tree had broken clean oft", leaving a high stump of about eighteen to twenty feet or more. The 

 egg in each instance was laid on the decayed wood at the bottom of the hollow varying from 

 two to four feet deep. Since 1880 I have found about ten or a dozen nests with either one egg 



