24 



Notes on a Collection of Birdskins from 

 Kalgoorlie, W.A. 



By Robert Hall. 



[Communicated by Professor E. C. Stirling.] 



[Read April 3, 1900.] 



Kalgoorlie, Alice Springs, and Derby are approximately 1,000 

 miles from each other, embracing a triangular-like mass of 

 desert-land, of which the bases are about equal and not unlike. 

 As we have a fairly good record of the birds of Derby and 

 Central Australia, it remains for us to provide a list of what 

 species are known to be associated with the South-West position. 

 To Mr. Lindsay Cameron I am indebted for a nice collection of 

 skins. From his memoranda I gather the country is very desert- 

 like, as far as animal life is concerned. It is, in the main, flat, 

 with low rounded hills every few miles, and is covered with short 

 and dry eucalyptus - scrub some 15 feet high. Occasional 

 Casuarinas are seen, with Salsolacea? interspersed between the 

 gums. Eucalypts, perhaps 50 feet high, are represented with 

 their branches meagrely supplied with foliage. There appears to 

 be no surface water away from the mining camps, which use it 

 only when condensed. The numerous lacustrine beds hold water 

 for a short time, and get it only after irregular thunder storms. 

 " At the present time," Mr. Cameron writes, " the Government 

 of this colony is supplying us from a part some 300 miles distant." 

 From this information we may gather that water birds will not 

 be mentioned in this present list, and that it is a land in which 

 an Eastern man so much misses the organ-pipe strains of the 

 Magpies (Gymnorhince) and the piping notes of the Magpie Lark 

 (Grallina). 



To deepen the interest, I supply some few field notes of per- 

 sonal observation upon Eastern specimens of the same species. 



Those to which the asterisk is added have received notice by 

 the Sir Thomas Elder Expedition, when above Kalgoorlie, and as 

 recorded in the Trans. Roy. Soc, S.A., XVI., p. 156. Eighteen 

 specimens of ten species are there noted as the total ornitho- 

 logical results of that long journey. The Bower-bird (Ghlamy- 

 dodera guttata) appears to have been the most important find, 

 and not before or since recorded as found in W.A. The Cockatoo 

 (Cacatua roseicapilla) was at that time noted as well, this being 

 one of three held observations in the West to date. Recorded 

 now as found in West and South- West Australia is the yellow- 



