36 BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 



abundant supply of its natural food, and this circumstance may 

 have led Caley to consider it to be migratory. 



The flight of the Nankeen Kestrel differs from that of its 

 European ally in being more buoyant and easy, the bird fre- 

 quently suspending itself in the air without the slightest appa- 

 rent motion of its wings : having ascended to a great height, 

 it flies round in a series of circles, these flights being often 

 performed during the hottest part of the day — a circumstance 

 which leads me to suppose that some kind of insect was the ob- 

 ject of the search, it being well known that at midday insects 

 ascend to a much greater altitude than at any other time. 



The sexes present the usual differences in their markings, 

 the female having all the upper surface alternately barred with 

 buff and brown, while the male is furnished with a more uni- 

 form tint. I once took four fully-fledged young from a hole 

 in a tree by the side of a lagoon at Brezi, in the interior of 

 New South Wales ; I also observed nests which T believe 

 were constructed by this bird, but which may possibly have 

 been deserted domiciles of a Crow or Crow-Shrike. Gilbert, 

 in the journal kept by him during Dr. Leichardt's expedition, 

 says : — " October 2. Found, for the first time, the eggs of 

 Tinminculus Cenchro'ides, four in number, deposited in a hol- 

 low spout of a gum-tree overhanging a creek ; there was no 

 nest, the eggs being merely deposited on a bed of decayed 

 wood." They are freckled all over with blotches and minute 

 dots of rich reddish chestnut on a paler ground, and are one 

 inch and five-eighths in length by one inch and a quarter in 

 breadth. I am indebted to Mr. S. White, of the Reed-beds, 

 near Adelaide, in South Australia, for a fine set of eoisrs of this 

 bird, which I believe were taken by himself in the interior of 

 the country. 



The male has the forehead white ; head and back of the 

 neck reddish grey, with the shaft of each feather black ; back, 

 scapularies, and wing-coverts cinnamon-red, with a small ob- 

 long patch of black near the extremity of each feather ; pri- 



