20 ASEBY — The Northern Forest Kingfisher, 



dab, the bight of a loop of rope (specimen in the Adelaide 

 Museum), or the leaves of a prickly pear. A pair have been 

 known to build on a beam over the stampers of a quartz crush- 

 ing mill. 



The nest is cup-shaped and built of strips of bark and dried 

 grasses bound together with cobweb; it is lined with fine 

 grasses and sometimes a little sheep's wool, rabbit fur, or 

 horse hair. When the young are hatched the old birds will 

 attack anything or anybody that comes near their nest. They 

 are at first careful to carry off all droppings and let them fall 

 at some distance from the nest but as the young grow older 

 they become less particular and the nest and vicinity become 

 much fouled. When Hushed from the nest the parent bird 

 runs or flutters along the ground as though on broken legs. 

 Two and occasionally three broods are reared in a season, 

 sometimes the same nest is repaired and used for all the 

 broods and sometimes a new one is built. Sometimes it is re- 

 built, on an adjacent branch of material from the old nest. 

 There is a specimen in the Adelaide Museum of four 

 successive nests built on top of each other. Three or four eggs 

 are laid for a setting; the eggs are of a creamy white ground 

 colour, with a zone of black, dark brown, and purplish brown 

 spots at the larger end, the purplish spots look as if beneath 

 the surface of the shell. The zone is sometimes about the 

 middle of the egg and sometimes at the smaller end. They are 

 sometimes hosts to the pallid cuckoo and narrow-billed bronze 

 cuckoo. The average measurements of 18 eggs is 19.5 m.m. x 

 14.3 m.m., largest egg, 21 m.m. x 15 m.m., smallest egg, IS m.m. 

 x 14 m.m. 



Halcyon macleayii coeruleus subsp. n. — The 

 Northern Forest Kingfisher. 



By Edwin Ashby, R.A.O.U. 



The specimen described hereunder was obtained at Anson 

 Bay, Northern Territory, in 1911, by my friend Mr. C. E. May, 

 a gentleman to whom our State museum and myself have been 

 indebted for many interesting ornithological specimens. 



In the South Australian Museum is an immature specimen 

 of the same species collected by Mi'. May at Port Keats in the 

 Northern Territory. 



