WESTERN GOMB-CRESTED JAGANA. 
varieties, and are the favourite haunt of these birds, their long toes making 
their passage along the top of the floating vegetation quite easy. I found 
the eggs by shooting the old bird as it left the nesting-site. In the young 
the frontal lappet was very small. In the eggs, which contained large 
young ones, the lappet was barely discernible and the feet were almost 
normal; no long claws were developed, although the feathers were quite 
formed. 
“At the slightest alarm they dive down at once or take flight. Their 
powers of diving and of remaining under water are equal to those of any 
bird I have ever met with ; on the other hand their powers of flight are very 
weak ; they wfll, however, often mount up fifteen or twenty yards and fly from 
one end of the lake to the other, a distance of half or three-quarters of a mile, 
but generally they merely rise above the surface of the water and fly off for 
about a hundred yards. During flight their long legs are thrown out 
horizontally to their fuU length ; when feeding they utter a slowly-repeated 
clmh-cluchy* 
The bird figured and described is the type-male, collected on Parry’s 
Greek, North-west Australia, on January 6th, 1909 ; the female was obtained 
at the same time and place by Mr. J. P. Rogers. 
\\ 
* Gilbert, in Gould’s Handb. Birds Avstr., Vol. II., p. 331, 1865. 
319 
