Vol. XVII 

 1917 



•] Macgillivray, Ornithologists in North Queensland. 63 



Ornithologists in North Queensland. 

 By Captain (Dr.) W. Macgillivray, President of the R.A.O.U. 



Part I. 

 When Mr. M'Lennan was on a visit to me in the early part 01 

 1913, he persuaded me to aUow him to go back in quest of a 

 Parrot that prospectors, sandalwood -getters, and others had 

 spoken to him about as frequenting the scrubs on the Pascoe 

 River, on the east coast of the Cape York Peninsula, and which, 

 from descriptions supplied, he believed to be an Eclectus. 



He left Thursday Island on the 26th June of that year in a 

 three-ton cutter, with two prospectors, and. after visiting and 

 making observations on the bird-life of several islands on his way 

 down the coast, entered the mouth of the Pascoe River on the 

 loth July. This river rises further south from the eastern slope 

 of the main Sir William Thompson Range, at a point opposite 

 Lloyd's Bay. and. pursues a northerly course between this 

 range and the two smaller Tozer and Nelson Ranges, which shut 

 it off from the coast at Lloyd's Bay, until it reaches lat. 12" 30". 

 It then turns almost at right angles, and runs down to empty 

 itself into the sea in We^miouth Bay. It is here a very consider- 

 able stream of from 80 to 100 yards in width, its banks clothed 

 for the first two miles with a dense growth of mangroves, and 

 beyond this limit with open forest or tropical scrub, the latter 

 growing right down to the water's edge. In places also the banks 

 are lined with a palisade formed of the great fronds of the Nipa 

 palm ; this palm has no stem proper, its fronds growing from a 

 base in the mud and shooting up to a height of from 30 to 

 40 feet. The river is a difficult one to navigate, owing to the 

 sand-bars, and, further up, logs and snags, the large trees growing 

 on the river's edge falling into the stream as the banks are under- 

 mined by the frequent floods of the wet season. 



On his way up the river Mr. M'Lennan's attention was attracted 

 by a Parrot which flew across, whose cry and manner of flight 

 were both unfamiliar to him. This afterwards proved to be 

 Geoffroyiis geoffroyi, a bird which had been known for over a 

 century from the Malay Archipelago, but not previously known 

 to occur in Australia. 



On the 17th July what appeared to be a Black Cockatoo flew 

 screeching past his camp, but it was not until many days of 

 watching — waiting for hours at a time in the tops of the tallest 

 ^^rees — ^that the feeding-places were located, the birds stalked, 

 and specimens procured. This proved to be the bird he had come 

 in search of — Eclectus pectoralis — a species that had been known 

 from Papua for nearly a century and a half. It is only just to 

 our Australian bird to say that it is a bigger and much finer bird. 



A shortage of stores made a trip to Lloyd's Island necessary. 

 A sail was rigged on the dinghy (the cutter having returned to 

 Thursday Island), and M'Lennan and a mate left the Pascoe 

 River on the 27th July, and by dint of much hard pulling and 



