APPENDIX. 



395 



Hah. Rockingham Bay, Port Denison, Wide Bay District, 

 Dawson River, Richmond and Clarence Rivers District, New 

 South Wales, Interior, Victoria and South Australia. {Ramsay.) 



EUDROMIAS AUSTRALIS, Gould. 

 Atistraliaii Dotterel. 

 Gould, Handbk. Bds. Aust., Vol. ii., sp. 505, p. 227. ^^J— ' 



Mr. K. H. Bennett has sent the following notes upon the 

 nidification of this species :—" 26th April; 1889.— Found to-day 

 a nest of Eudromias australis, containing three eggs ; this is 

 unusually early, for hitherto T have never known this bird to 

 breed before September or Octolier. The eggs were placed on a 

 small natural mound of earth some four or five inches in diameter, 

 and about the same height above the surrounding ground, and 

 were completely covered with small dried sticks some two or 

 three inches in length. I disturbed the bird from the nest on 

 which she was sitting, and noticing only the sticks I at first 

 thought that in consequence of the ground all round being covered 

 in water to the depth of two or three inches — the result of recent 

 heavy rains — that the bird in this particular instance had departed 

 from the usual custom, and had constructed a kind of nest, and 

 that she had not yet deposited her eggs, but on closer examination 

 I found the eggs on the bare ground, and that the sticks had been 

 placed carefully over them as a safeguard from the keen-eyed 

 Orow, as whenever the old bird should leave her nest without 

 tliis covering, situated as they were, they would have been very 

 conspicuous, as the little mound in which they were placed was 

 the only dry spot for fifty or sixty yards around." 



In his notes Mr. Bennett also records finding another nest of 

 this species with two eggs in it on the 29th April, covered in a 

 similar manner with small sticks, and another on the 3rd May 

 with two eggs ; in the latter instance they were not covered, but 

 were simply deposited on the loose earth on high dry ground. 



Hab. New South Wales, Interior, South Australia. {Ramsay. 

 Z-^Appendix II, 



