38 
The Queensland Naturalist. 
VoL. I. 
at Sherwood. By A. Ralston : Fossil Vertebra, from 
Hughenden. By J. Saudison ; Fossil Plants from Boggo 
Road. Brisbane. By C. W. Holland : Chalk idol from New 
Ireland and (under the microscope), specimens of Fora- 
minifera taken therefrom. 
Address : By S. B. J. Skertchly, on the Geology of 
Sherwood, Brisbane. 
THE SPINE-TAILED SWIFT {Chcetura caudacuta) AND 
ITS FOOD.* 
By Henry Tryon. 
The bird on which these remarks are founded was 
shot by one of our members, J. O’N. Brenan, on Saturday, 
28th March, at 6 p.m. 
It then formed one of a party of about 100 that were 
flying past Toowong due north, the different individuals 
being widely separated from one another. 
This, trend of their flight is accounted for by the fact 
that the Spine-Tailed Swift rears its progeny in the north 
of the Asiatic continent. 
Archibald J. Campbell, in his superb work, “ Nests 
and Eggs of Australian Birds ’’ in the solitary instance of 
the display of its nesting habit that he cites, mentions a 
statement on the part of a Japanese correspondent, that 
he had found it nesting in the deep recesses between hori- 
zontal shelves of hea'd rock in a perpendicular escarpment 
at the site of a water-fall near Yokohama. 
An examination of the bird will bring to view its 
peculiar form, and explain its special adaptability to rapid 
and sustained flight. 
The authority referred to intimates that no instance 
of its being seen settled is known to him, as far as Australia 
is concerned. Its peculiar tail, endowed with feathers, 
each of which terminates in a sharp spine, suggests 
that it is in the habit of perching against some perpendicular 
surface, either rock or tree. A quotation from Campbell, 
relating to its habits when at large, will bear reproduction. 
This is as follows : — 
“ A correspondent, writing from the Lower Tarwin, 
grapliically depicts some of its habits : — ‘ Day by day 
these birds are my constant companions, now swooping low 
along the heather, hawking in wide circles high in the air, 
or cutting and glamcing through the thick smoke of bush 
fires. I see them at early dawn, while the heather is wet 
with dew, solitary birds skimming low along the fields. 
Once in a while a faint silvery tv/itter proves that the 
^ Read at meeting on 10th April, 1908. 
