310 OHABADBIAB^. 



Hah. Derby, N.W. Australia, Eockingham Bay, Port Denison, 

 Wide Bay District, Richmond and Clarence Rivers Districts, New 

 South Wales, Interior, Victoria and South Australia, Tasmania, 

 West and South- West Australia. (Ramsay.) 



Genus HIMANTOPUS, Brisson. 



HIMANTOPUS LEUCOCEPHALUS, Gould. 

 White-headed Stilt. 

 GouU, Handbk. Bds. Aust, Vol. ii., sp. 517, p. 246. J^EZT 3 



" The Stilted Plover must be considered rather a scarce than a 

 rare bird in New South Wales, its visits being few and far between. 

 When it does come, however, which is usually in some very dry or 

 remarkably wet season, it appears in great numbers and in all 

 stages of plumage. In 1865 large flocks arrived in coiHpany with 

 the Straw-necked and White Ibises, (Geronticus spinicoUis and 

 Tli/reskiornis striotipennis), and took up their abode in the lagoons 

 and swamps in the neighbourhood of Grafton, on the Clarence 

 River, where, on my visit to that district in September 1866, 

 all three species were still enjoying themselves. A few days 

 previous to my arrival in Grafton, a black in the employ of Mr. 

 J. Maogillivray, and a very intelligent collector, discovered a 

 nest of this species containing four eggs, which have been secured 

 for our collection. The nest was a slight structure, consisting 

 merely of a few short pieces of rushes and grass, placed in and 

 around a depression at the foot of a clump of rushes growing near 

 the water's edge of a lagoon in the neighbourhood of South 

 Grafton. The eggs vary slightly in form, two being pyriform, 

 the other two rather long. The ground colour is of a yellowish- 

 olive or light yellowish-brown, lighter when freshly taken — in 

 some sparingly, in others thickly blotched and spotted with umber 

 and black, the black spots running together and forming large 

 patches on the thick ends. Length from 1-^^ inch to liV inch ; 

 breadth li inch to H inch." {Mamsay, P.Z.S., 1867, p. 600.) 



