292 FALCON IN .I-;. 



A. Thorpe, on I''raser Island. Gilbert found it breedin*,' on Rottnest Island, in Western Australia, 

 also at Port Essin^ton, in the Northern Territory of South Australia, and it has been recorded 

 by many observers on different parts of the coast line of Australia and the adjacent islands. 

 Durinf:; a trip made to Houtmann's .\brolhos, lying off Geraldton, Western .Australia, by Mr. 

 C. G. Gibson and party, in igo8, it was found breeding on several of the islands, but at that 

 time all the nests contained young, no less than eight nests being found on I'elsait Island. At 

 Point Cloates, North-western Australia, Mr. Tom Carter during a long residence observed that 

 nearly a score of pairs of birds nested every season on different parts of his station, both on the 

 coast and inland. Further north the late Mr. T. H. Bowyer-Bower obtained specimens at 

 Derby, and Mr. G. A. Keartland, while a member of the CaKert Exploring Expedition, met 

 with it on the Fitzroy and Margaret Rivers in the early part of I1S97. On the opposite side of 

 the continent, further north, Mr. George Masters informs me that it was found breeding by 

 the members of the Chevert Expedition, fitted out by the late Sir William Macleay in 1S75, '^ 

 handsome pair of eggs in the Macleay Museum, at the T'niversity of Sydney, being taken by an 

 Aboriginal from a nest in the topmost branches of a Gum-tree on an island in Torres Strait. 

 F'arther south Mr. Franlc Hislop found it breeding in the Bloomfield Ri\er District, 

 North-eastern Queensland. In the early part of igoq Mr. II. Neilson, collecting on behalf of 

 Mr. H. L. White, of Belltrees, Scone, New South Wales, found a large number of nests on the 

 islets inside the Barrier Reef, and in the neighbourhood of St. Laurence, Bowen and Mackay, 

 and Mr. John Ramsay found it breeding on the Mary River and Brisbane Ri\er. In Northern 

 New South Wales I saw a pair of these birds " fishing " between the Tweed River and Cook 

 Island, and at St. George's Basin, in the Illawarra District, I am informed a pair of these birds 

 have bred in a lofty Gum for many years ; there are also several unlocalised specimens in the 

 Old Collection of the Australian Museum, procured in diflerent parts of the State. From South 

 Australia Mr. Edwin Ashby sends me a note of his obtaining a specimen about three miles 

 from lilackwood, South Australia, and of his taking eggs from a rock near Middle River, on 

 Kangaroo Island. Dr. Lonsdale Holden sent me a note that the Rev. H. S. Atkinson, on the 

 27th September, i885, observed an Osprey perched on a telegraph post between Circular Head 

 and Rocky Cape, Tasmania, and Mr. E. D. Atkinson observed it in the r)'Entrecasteaux 

 Channel, in the south-eastern portion of that island, and has eggs in his collection that were 

 taken on King Island, Bass Strait. 



There is little or no variation in adult specimens obtained in different parts of the continent, 

 but an example in the Australian Museum Collection has no white notchings to the inner webs 

 of the tail-feathers. 



From the Bloomfield River District, North-eastern Queensland, Mr. Frank Hislop writes 

 me as follows: — " The White-headed Osprey generally builds on a dead tree in the forest land. 

 I only knew of two nests on the Bloomfield River, and the birds have been using them every 

 season for a great many years. A black boy went up one of the trees and got one egg, but the 

 other tree is not safe to climb, as it is very rotten. I do not know how many eggs they usually 

 lay, but they are seldom seen feeding more than one young bird. Both nests are a good way 

 from the sea. These birds live on fish." 



Mr. H. L. White, of Belltrees, Scone, New South Wales, has a large series of these 

 handsome eggs in his collection, and has supplied me with the following interesting notes ; — 

 " Mr. Henry Nielson, of Mackay, Queensland, while employed by me collecting during 

 1909, observed upwards of thirty nests of Pandion leiKoitfhalui upon the islands inside the Barrier 

 Reef, in the vicinity of Bowen, Mackay and St. Laurence, sailing nine hundred and twenty 

 miles in a small three ton cutter during May, June and July. Nesting sites were about equally 

 divided between trees and rocks; when the first named is chosen, the tree is invariably a 

 broken-topped one ; many of the nests on rocks were placed a few feet only above high water 



