November, 1922 
The Queensland Naturalist. 
115 
BIRD SEEKING IN QUEENSLAND. 
By A. IT. Chisholm, R.A.O.U. 
Part 2. 
1 
IT. C. Rawnsley lias been mentioned in association with 
Coxen and Diggles. He was a Government surveyor, and 
was keenly interested in the study and preservation of 
birds. For the old Philosophical Society he read several 
interesting papers, including one “On the M emir a superba , 
Lyre-Bird, or Mountain-Pheasant” (4th August, 1863) — 
some good notes taken near Illawarra, in New South Wales 
— and another on ‘‘Habits of the Satin-bird” (10th April, 
1865), this in amplification of Coxen ’s paper on the habits 
of the Regent-bird. Rawnsley seems to have established the 
first sanctuaries about Brisbane. He was the owner of a 
house still known as “Witton,” situate on a small creek of 
that name near Indooroopilly. When he lived there — he has 
been dead some forty years — the place was beautifully 
environed in scrub and forest, and no shooting was 
permitted therein. 
Rawnsley ’s name was given by Diggles to a Bower-bird, 
called Ptilonorhynchus rawnsley l, out the bird was said 
later to be a hybrid, between the Satin Bower-bird (F. 
holosericeus) and the Regent-bird ( Sericulus melinus). 
Certainly the find was a most remarkable one, and 
Diggles had his opinion of the validity of the species 
supported by A. C. Gregory.* What Diggles termed “this 
splendid new species” was submitted to the veteran 
explorer, who stated that he had seen just such a bird on 
the Suttor River, a branch of the Burdekin, in 1856. As 
Gould pointed out, however, it was evident from what 
Gregory said of the call of this bird that what he had seen 
was the Black Cuckoo (Koel), after whose call his own 
suburb of Toowongt was named. No other specimen of 
the novel bird has ever been found. This objection to the 
validity of the species, however, is met by Mr. R. Illidge, 
the oldest of Brisbane bird-students, in the following note: 
* Gregory remained in Queensland and became Surveyor-General 
and a leading public figure. He was first President of the Royal 
Society of Queensland and President of the Australian Association 
for the Advancement of Science at its first Brisbane session. 
t “Tu-wong” is one of the calls of the male Koel. It was 
formerly very common about the area that is now Toowong, being 
attracted by the plenitude of a. favourite feeding-tree, the Coekspur- 
bush, Cudrania Javanensis. 
