THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
This description, taken from the co-type of seventy years ago, requires modification 
when freshly moulted specimens are examined. Through Mr. Hull’s generosity I am 
enabled to add the following details ; — 
Head, hind-neck, sides of neck and mantle dark bluish-grey ; median and greater 
wing-coverts and back ashy-grey with noticeable white fringes to the feathers ; lower- 
back lighter ; rump dark, hke head ; upper tail-coverts and tail like lower-back, but 
tips of tail-feathers darker. 
All the feathers of the upper surface with fighter bases ; from the back to the tail pure 
white bases. 
Adult female. Not so dark above as the male, and slightly smaller in all the measurements. 
The sexed pair Mr. Hull forwarded me for examination show no differences, the female 
being slightly larger in some measurements. 
Nest. “ A depression in the ground, or a crevice amongst loose stones, fined with a small 
quantity of broken pieces of dead fronds of the cabbage palm ” (Hull). 
Ngg. " One, soft chalky-white, rounded oval, dimensions 1.96 by 1.48 inches ” (Hull). 
Breeding-season. November and December (Hull). 
Gotjld* writes : “ I frequently saw it [this bird] during my passage from Sydney 
to Cape Horn, but it was most numerous between the coast of Australia and the 
northern part of New Zealand. It is one of the most elegantly formed species 
of the genus, and is rendered conspicuously different from the rest of its congeners 
by its white abdomen and under wing-coverts, which show very conspicuously 
when the bird is on the wing.” 
The original description is here reproduced : — 
Procellaria leucoptera n. sp. Crown of the head, all the upper surface and wings dark 
slaty black ; tail slate-grey ; greater wing-coverts slightly fringed with white ; face, throat, 
all the under surface, the base of the inner webs of the primaries and secondaries, and a line 
along the inner edge of the shoulders pure white ; bill black ; tarsus and basal half of the 
interdigital membrane fleshy- white; remainder of toes and interdigital membrane black. 
Total length 13 inches ; bill 1 ; wing ; tail 4 ; tarsi 1 J ; middle toe and nail If. 
Nearly allied to P. mollis but much smaller in size, and differs also in the white line 
along the under surface of the wing, formed by the white basal halves of the feathers. 
It breeds in great numbers on Cabbage-tree Island, at the mouth of Port Stephen’s 
Harbour, New South Wales. 
The bird figured and described is a male from the Gould collection, and is 
a paratype received in exchange. 
Mr. Hulll who found this bird breeding on Cabbage-tree Island in December, 
1910, writes (October) : “ We heard a shrill cry, like the sounds ‘ Peep, peep ’ 
rapidly repeated several times, and a small bluish-grey bird fiuttered out from 
under the dead fronds, and half fiew, half waddled down the gully towards 
the shore. It soon became entangled in the vines, and upon being captured 
proved to be (Estrelata leucoptera Gould. Further search revealed several more 
birds, all of which uttered their cry upon hearing our footsteps. Some were 
* Handb. Birds Austr., Vol. II., p. 455, 1865. 
t Emu, Vol. X., p. 255, 1911. 
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