Vol. VIII. 



1909 



J From Magazines, &€. 22 5 



A Hibernating Hawk.— In an article in the Agricnlinral 

 Gazette of Cape Colony for December the following appears : — 

 " All birds ought to be looked upon as friends of the farmer and 

 enemies of locusts, and more especially the Brown Hawk with 

 his V tail (Dutch name Kaken Valk, Kaffir Ntyoyieja). Owing 

 to his habit of catching his food on the wing, I have timed this 

 Hawk, and found him to catch 50 or 60 locusts per minute. 

 He stores his food for winter in hollow trees. Another 

 peculiarity of this bird is, it loses all its feathers while lying 

 dormant during the winter. I recently came across one of these 

 birds in its winter quarters, where I found he had collected 

 thousands of locusts, grasshoppers, beetles, grass snakes, lizards, 

 toads, and a few chickens. Surely this bird ought to be better 

 protected, being both a vermin-killer and a scavenger. I will be 

 pleased to communicate to you further observations I may make, 

 as I consider the subject (locusts) one that every person ought 

 to do what he can to facilitate the extermination of — this terrible 

 plague to our agricultural industry in the colony." I have read 

 of squirrels and other quadrupeds storing up food for winter 

 consumption, but this is the first instance of a bird doing so 

 that has come to my knowledge. Putting off his clothes when 

 he goes to sleep in winter — I don't know what to think about 

 that ! Do you know anything about this Brown Hawk with the 

 V tail .?— " A.O.U." Rockhampton. 



* * * 



Discovery of the Nests and Eggs of two Rare 

 Birds. — In The Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., xxxiii., p. 799, the 

 important announcement is made that " Mr. North exhibited 

 the nest and eggs of Newton's Bower-Bird {Prionoduni neiv- 

 toniana, De Vis) and of the Tooth-billed Bower-Bird {Scetiopceetes 

 dentirostris, Ramsay), together with skins of the females, shot 

 near the nests. They were obtained, through the instrumentality 

 of Mr. Robert Grant, from Messrs. John and George Sharp, of 

 whom the latter procured them respectively on the 9th and 7th 

 November, 1908, on the Bellenden Ker Range, after waiting near 

 the nests for over an hour, and flushing the females from them 

 several times, before shooting them and taking the nests and 

 eggs. The nest of Prionodura newtoniana is an open cup- 

 shaped structure formed externally of dead leaves and portions 

 of leaves, including fragments of stag-horn ferns and a small 

 quantity of dried mosses, and is lined inside at the bottom with 

 thin dead twigs. Externally it measures 5| inches in diameter 

 by 2\ in depth, the inner cup measuring 4I inches in diameter 

 by I J in depth. It was built about the centre of an opening 4 

 feet long and about 6 inches wide, inside in a rotten tree, 3 feet 

 from the ground, and contained two eggs. The eggs are oval in 

 form, the shell being finely granulate, lustrous, and of a uniform 



