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it : — “ Headj neck, upper and under surface reddish fawn-colour, deepest and most conspicuous on the rump 
and tail-feathers j down the centre of each of the feathers is a streak of blackish brown, broadest and most 
conspicuous on the back, rump, and upper tail-coverts ; primaries blackish brown, strongly toothed on their 
inner margins with greyish white ; tail-feathers irregularly crossed with blackish hrown ; thighs light buff/’ 
This fine Curlew, which is common on many parts of the Australian coast, occurs in New Zealand 
only as an occasional straggler. 
A specimen was shot by Mr. Travers at the Wairau, in the provincial district of Nelson, in the 
summer of 1874-5, and was presented by him to the Colonial Museum. Another occurrence of the 
species in New Zealand was recorded by myself, on the authority of Sir James Hector, in the 
‘ Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute ’ (vol. vii. p. 224) ; and a year later Sir Julius Haast 
reported the two specimens mentioned above as having been received in the fiesh at the Canterbury 
Museum *. 
Mr. St. C. Liardet, who is an experienced collector, informs me that he saw a fiock of five (in 
March or April) near the bluff which stands between the Wairau and Awatere river-mouths. He shot 
one at Iron Bay, near the Wellington heads, about the end of February; this was in adult plumage 
and proved on dissection to be a female ; bill, along the ridge 8 inches, along the edge of lower 
mandible 6*5. 
From its habit of associating on the sands with the flocks of Godwits it is probable that this 
species visits our shores more often than is generally supposed and escapes detection in the crowd. 
Mr. Gould found this Curlew very plentiful on the shores of Tasmania, but he was never able 
to discover its breeding-place ; and he expressed his belief that it retires to the high lands of the 
interior for the purpose of reproduction. 
Mr. Seebohm writes f : — “ There are only two Curlews in which the rump scarcely differs in 
colour from the rest of the upper parts, instead of being pure white with or without streaks, in either 
case in strong contrast to the darker mantle. The Australian Curlew is one of these, and differs from 
the other (W longirostris) in having the underparts, including the axillaries, nearly white, streaked 
and barred with brown. Both species are large, with tarsi more than three inches long. Like its 
ally in the New World, it is a migratory bird, but the migrations of the Curlews on the Asiatic shores 
of the Pacific are on a very different scale to those of their cousins on the American shores of that 
ocean. The Australian Curlew breeds somewhere in Eastern Siberia, since it occurs on migration 
from Lake Baikal to the mouth of the Amoor, and along the coasts of Japan and China. It crosses 
the line to winter in Australia, and has also been recorded from Tasmania, New Guinea, Borneo, and 
some of the smaller islands of the Malay Archipelago.” 
Dr. Eamsay says that in Australia it is “ common everywhere in suitable places, and on muddy 
flats along the coast, and occasionally may be found on the margins of lakes and lagoons inland a 
considerable distance.” 
* Trans. N.-Z. Inst. vol. ix. pp. 427-429. 
t ‘ Geogr. Distrib. of the Fam. CharadriidEe,’ p. 326. 
