14 LEAD-BEATER'S COCKATOO. 



on the back and wings, which are all but white: the long crest of 

 narrow pointed feathery plumes is a very magnificent affair, red at the 

 base, followed by an inch or so of bright canary yellow, then red again 

 with tips of purest white: and the bird appears to be conscious that 

 its chief charm lies in this appendage, for it is never weary of displaying 

 it for the admiration of all and sundry beholders. The beak is of a 

 pale grey-white; the upper mandible strangely sinuated and toothed; the 

 feathers at the immediate base of the bill are crimson, forming a narrow 

 band or fillet. The under surface of the wings is rich crimson red. 

 The legs and toes are dark grey, the scales distinctly marked by lines 

 of a lighter shade of the same colour. 



The female bears a general resemblance to her lord, but is paler on 

 the breast; the irides, however, are the surest indication of the sex of 

 a given bird, as in the female they are reddish brown, and jet black 

 in the male. The late Mr. John Grould, in his magnificent work on 

 The Birds of Australia, represents two of these Cockatoos, which he 

 calls male and female, with red-brown irides, and the same thing occurs 

 in his illustration of the Rosy Cockatoo (Psittacus roseicapillus) , so that 

 he does not appear to have noticed this distinction: but such trifling 

 omissions are easily accounted for, and in nowise detract from the 

 sterling merit of the grandest work on ornithological Australia in the 



There is no instance on record of this Cockatoo having bred in 

 Europe, and it is such a very shy and suspicious bird, we scarcely 

 think there will be, until some enthusiastic amateur, gifted with wealth 

 and much patience, constructs a large and strong aviary, appropriately 

 furnished with the trunk and limbs of a dead tree, and devotes it solely 

 to the use of a pair of these splendid birds; or turns a couple out into 

 a wood, far from the guns of bovine-brained agriculturists; when, as 

 likely as not, the Leadbeaters, with a perverseness characteristic of 

 their family, will separate, each contracting an alliance with a partner 

 of a different kind, and bring up broods of monstrous hybrids, as they 

 are recorded to have done at Northrepps Hall, rather than consent to 

 perpetuate their race in a foreign country and uncongenial clime. 



Vigors, who was the first English writer to describe this Cockatoo, 

 named it after a friend, Mi*. Leadbeater, well-known to ornithologists, 

 and has left us a most interesting account of a truly interesting bird. 



Quoting from the Notes of Mr. Caley, he says: — "These birds are 

 shy and not easily approached. The flesh of the young is accounted 

 good eating. I have heard from the natives that it makes its nest in 

 the rotten limbs of trees, of nothing more than the vegetable mould 

 formed by the decayed parts of the bough; that it has no more than 



