NESTS AND EGGS OF AUSTRALIAN ACCIPITRES. 
417 
if rain has fallen after the animal has passed over the ground. These 
animals are more or less infested with two or three kinds of parasites, 
and often have sore places, apparently caused by one of these insects 
burrowing under the skin. These tree kangaroos are very pugnacious, 
and when placed together on a tree in captivity fight very viciously, 
the weaker occasionally being killed. The young leave the pouch 
about August. 
6.— NESTS AND EGGS OF THE AUSTRALIAN ACCIPITRES, OR 
DIURNAL BIRDS OF PREY. 
By A. J. CAMPBELL. 
It is with peculiar pleasure I ask the Brisbane Congress to 
accept this treatise of the Nests and Eggs of Australian Hawks, 
because they are amongst the most interesting and useful of our birds, 
and because we now possess information, more or less, respecting the 
nidification of all known Australian forms, save one — which may be 
filled in by analogy. 
Not only have I endeavoured to give as concise a description 
as possible of the various nests and eggs, but I have also furnished a 
reference to all previous descriptions of eggs pertaining to the species 
under notice. The accepted geographical range of each species is 
likewise furnished ; and I trust not the least interesting are the 
popular observations given, gleaned from other writers aud field 
observers, and embodied with new and original matter of my own. 
Moreover, I hope the article may be the means of stirring up 
Australians to a better knowledge of these noble birds, to admire and 
protect them as the most useful of vermin-destroyers in our land. 
I know r the hands of our friends the squatters are against that king of 
hawks, the Wedge-tailed Eagle, because it takes a few lambs during 
a brief season, but they should remember the numbers of pestilent 
rabbits, in addition to other vermin, that the eagles clear off the land- 
owners’ broad estates during the rest of the season. Again, because 
a good henwife loses a stray chicken now and then, are all the smaller 
and beautiful hawks— birds that materially aid in keeping the hordes 
of grasshoppers, plagues of mice, snakes, &c., in check — to be swept 
off the face of the country ? 
Circus Gouldi, Bonaparte. 
(Harrier or Swamp-hawk.) 
Figure. — Gould : “ Birds of Australia,” fol., vol. i., pi. 26. 
Previous Descriptions of Fggs. — Gould: “Birds of Australia,” 
Handbook, vol. i., p. 59 (1865) ; Potts : Trans. New Zealand Inst., 
vol. ii., p. 52 (1870) ; Buller : “ Birds of New' Zealand” (1873), also 
vol. i., p. 2L2 (1888) ; North : Catalogue Nests and Eggs Australian 
Birds, p. 2 (1889). 
Geographical Distribution . — Australia and Tasmania, also Lord 
Howe aud Norfolk Islands, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and Fiii 
Islands: 
Nest. — Built of coarse, dry herbage — stalks of thistles, dock, 
<fcc. ; sometimes of sticks and twigs, and lined with short pieces of 
2 c 
