284 KAI.rON'lN.E, 



Gum-tree, about one hundred and twenty feet from the i;r(jund, and what we thoui^ht was a 

 Crow's nest, but on his nearin.i; it out Hew txvo half-f!edj;ed yuun.L; Brown Hawks, and a third 

 remained in the nest. The young birds scrambled into conceahnent when they had fluttered to 

 earth: at any rate we could only find one of them after a prolonged search, though the ground 

 was by no means thickly covered with herbage and bushes. The one caught still had much 

 down on the head and back, but the markings on what feathers had grown plainly show it to be 

 Hicvdiidca on'fiitdlis. We saw nothing of the old birds." 



The Brown Hawk usually appropriates the deserted tenement of another species for the 

 purposes of breeding, more often that of a Crow or Raven, and not infrequently that of another 

 bird of prey, but occasionally builds a nest for itself, and its e'^'.;s may be taken at a considerable 

 altitude or within a few feet from the ground. As a general rule their nesting places are easily 

 accessible, for their eggs are the commonest of all the .Australian Accipitkes in collections. 

 Inland, where unmolested, they will breed almost anywhere, from a lofty Eucalyptus to the 

 crown of a Pine-tree ten or twelve feet from the ground. In response to a request Mr. H. (i. 

 Barnard, of Bimbi, Duaringa, Queensland, has favoured nie with the following notes on the 

 nests constructed by the Brown Hawk near his place, and from which he took sets of eggs, 

 during the season of 1908 : — " No. i : Nest of sticks, very slight egg cavity, no lining of leaves, 

 the eggs laid on bare sticks, e.xternal diameter eighteen inches, depth eight inches, hei,t;ht from 

 ground fifty-four feet. No. 2 : Formed of sticks only, top of nest Hat, no egg cavity, measuring 

 fifteen inches in diameter. The eggs were clearly visible from below, through the bottom of 

 the nest ; height from ground, seventy-five feet. No. 3 : Formed of sticks, the egg cavity slightly 

 lined with a few leaves, measuring e.xternally twenty inches in diameter, depth ten inches; 

 height from ground sixty-nine feet. I also took a set of Brown Hawks eggs from a disused 

 nest of the Wedge-tailed Eagle (Uvthrtus andax). The food of the Brown Hawk consists chiefly 

 of small snakes and grass-hoppers. I have never seen them with birds or lizards. When I say 

 small snakes, I have seen one of these birds l<ill one within a few inches of four feet long." 



The eggs are usually three, occasionally four, and sometimes only two in number for a sitting, 

 oval or rounded-oval in form, the shell being comparatisely close grained, dull and lustreless. 

 They are extremely variable in colour and disposition of their markings, but chiefly ranging 

 from pink to reds and browns, and from an almost invisible freckle to large irregular-shaped 

 blotches and clouded patches ; on some the markings are evenly distributed over the surface of 

 the shell, on others they form a large cap at one end, and the remainder of the shell may be 

 entirely destitute of them, and frequently two types of eggs are found in the same set. Of a set 

 of three taken by Dr. L. Holden at Circular Head Peninsula, on the north-west coast of 

 Tasmania, on the i8th October, 1887, two are of a yellowish-bulf ground colour, almost entirely 

 covered by small irregular shaped markings of reddish-brown, which are confluent, forming a 

 large cap on the thicker end of one specimen and the smaller end of the other ; the remaining 

 specimen has the ground colour of a reddish-bull, and the markings smaller and of a more 

 decided and richer shade of red, forming confluent patches on the larger half of the shell, and 

 measure as follows: — Length (A) i-gy x i'57 inches; (f!) 1-98 x i-6 inches; (C) 2 x 1-59 

 inches. Of a set of two taken by Mr. I'rank Hislop in Septi-mber, 1897, from the top of a fern 

 growing on the side of a tree, in the Bloomfield River District, one has the ground colour 

 reddish-buff, the other almost pure white, both being sparingly freckled on the larger end, and 

 boldly blotched on the smaller end with light reddish-brown, and measure: — Length (A) i'85 

 X f52 inches; (B) 1-95 x 1-54 inches. Of a set of four taken by Mr. H. G. Barnard, at 

 Bimbi, Duaringa, Queensland, on the 13th September, 1908, two are of a rich reddish-buff 

 ground colour, and have innumerable freckles and blotches of a darker shade of the ground 

 colour ; the others incline to a yellowish-buff, and are similarly marked with rich reddish-brown, 

 the blotches being more thickly disposed, larj;er and darker on the thicker end. They 



