xixox. 309 



cavity was covered with finely chipped rotten wood. Botli birds were \ery excited, calling to 

 each other the whole time I was climbing to the nest. On the 30th August I flushed another 

 of these Owls in a dead Tea-tree, and its mate from a hollow in another Tea-tree. The nesting 

 place was thirty feet from the ground, the entrance in a hori/ontal limb, and contained two hard 

 set eggs on a bed of tiiiely chipped rotten wood. I went on to where I had previously noted a 

 pair of these Owls on the 17th .\ugust, and flushed one from the branches and the other from a 

 hollow in a Tea-tree sixty feet from the ground. The tree was a diflicult one to climb, and the 

 hollow in an awkward p(js;tion to get at, and contained two eggs, but unfortunately I broke 

 them. I had just hold of the eggs when I felt myself slipping, and had to drop them and catch 

 hold of the tree. On the same day I flushed another of these Owls from a nesting place in a 

 dead Tea-tree. The hollow was t\venty-h\e feet from the grcjund, three feet in depth, and 

 fourteen inches across the entrance, the eggs two in number, being placed in a freshly built 

 nest of the Great Palm Cockatoo {MiiiVf:;!ossiis dtcvrimm). On the ist September, at Paira, I 

 found a nesting place in a Tea-tree hfty feet from the ground, the bottom of the cavity, which 

 was two feet deep, was co\ered with finely chipped wo id, on which tiie eggs were laid." 



The eggs are two in number for a sitting, varying from swollen oval to almost globular in 

 form, pure white, the shell being fine-grained and almost lustreless. A set of two taken by Mr. 

 W. McLennan at Cape York, Northern Queensland, measures: — Length (A) i-y5 x 1-45 

 inches; (B) i-Si x i-4>; inches. 



Eggs were obtained in .\ugust and September. 



Ninox occidentalis. 



WESTERN WrK'KIN(4 OWL. 

 Ninox connicenii-occidpiilidi.<, Ramsay, Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. Wales, Vol. T., 2nd ser., p. 1086 (1886). 

 Xino.r occvhnlaUt!, North and Iveartland, Trans. Roy. Soc. South Austr., ISS'J^ p. 129; Sharps, 

 Hand-1. Bds., V^ol. I., p. 201 (1899). 



Adult male. — Lih- tin- aJull male o/Nixox cosniven's, biU uliyhtly siunf/er, tlit' upper parts of 

 a paJer aiul dearer broim, as is also the croirn of the head : there. Is a, large extent of 7vhite on the 

 forehead feathers beneath the eyes and the ear-corerts ; the feathers of the entire nnder sii,rface streaked 

 vjitli pale ri'fuus-bro/r)i, and the thiglis fulvous, passing into filvous-H-lilte on the feet, and sparingly 

 flecked ivith brown. 'fatal hugth of skin 1.^:') inches, toiug 11, tail irS, Inll 11, tarsus rS. 



Adult FEMALK. — Similar in jiln.mage ti> the male, but slig/itly lanjer. Wing 12 inches. 



Distribution. — North-western Australia, Northern Territory of South ,\ustralia. 



/T^HP2 present species, described by Dr. E. P. Ramsay in the " Proceedings of the Linnean 

 JL Society of New South Wales" under the name of Ninox connivciis-oiiidentalis, was 

 discovered by Mr. E. J. Cairn near the Kimberley District, inland from Derby, North-western 

 Australia, in 1886, and may be distinguished chiefly by the pale rufous-brown stripe down the centre 

 of each feather of the under surface. Subsequently Mr. G. H. Keartland, while with the Calvert 

 Exploring Expedition in 1897, obtained specimens near the junction of the P'itzroy and Margaret 

 Rivers, and more recently Dr. Ernst Hartert, in " Novitates Zoologies-," i records it from 

 Yeeda Creek, in the West Kimberley L^istrict, also Margaret Crossing, South .\lligator and the 

 Mary Rivers in the Northern Territory of South Australia. 



Nino.x comii~,'cns and -V. boobook are each represented in the north-eastern and north-western 

 portions of the Continent by closely allied species. The former respectively by A^. y'c'«/;/_T»A;r/s 

 and N. occidcutalis, and the latter by N. litrida and N. occUata. 



' Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. Wales, Vol. I., 2nd Ser., p. 10S6 (18.SG). + Nov. Zoo!., Vol. XH., p. 209 (1905). 



