AUSTRALIAN PRATINCOLE. 
ground in pursuit, and springing up to a height of a foot or more as the 
insect rises, occasionally towering to a considerable altitude as some flying 
insect attracts its attention, returning to the ground in the skimming zig-zag 
manner before described.”* 
“ The home of the Australian Pratincole is the interior of New South 
Wales and the northern portion of the Province of South Australia . . . 
Mr. E. G. Vickery has kindly permitted me to describe an egg from his 
collection, taken near Wilcania on the Darling River in September 1880. 
He informs me that the parent bird was seen to fly from the eggs, and before 
they were taken, to return again and sit on the nest, so I think there can be 
little doubt of their authenticity. 
“ The eggs were three in number, the ground colour is of a creamy- 
white, dull light stone-brown, or light buff, well covered with irregularly 
shaped blotches, dots, and spots, and speckles of dull umber and sienna brown, 
with a few dots and dashes almost black, and obsolete spots here and there 
of slaty-grey ; length 1.3 in. by 1 in. ; in shape they are slightly oval, 
slightly swollen at the thicker end, and not pointed . . . Mr. Bennett 
informs me that they select a bare spot on the ground where the earth or 
sand assimilate to the colour and markings of the eggs. They breed during 
October. ”f 
“ Pratincoles, during the summer, are very numerous on the open 
downs about Hughenden and Richmond [North Queensland], where they 
nest. I have found youngsters in every stage of down and feather from the 
10th November to 12th March. Their eggs, laid on the bare ground, are 
among the hardest to see that I know of ; I have stood a few paces away 
from a nest containing two eggs, and having, without moving, taken my 
eyes off it for a moment, have found it very hard to locate again. Often when 
driving sheep have I watched the desperate efforts of a mother bird to beat 
off some particular spot, the advancing host of ‘ wooUies,’ throwing herself 
with outspread wings in the faces of the wondering sheep. Poor little 
Isabella I It would indeed be a hard heart that would not go to your 
assistance ; and as I ride away I am amply repaid by the way she runs, 
breathless but contented, little short runs, each ending in a tip up and down, 
round two or three pieces of broken stone, against which squat her two little 
mottled chicks. Though generally feeding on the ground, I have noticed 
them at times wheeling in the air, now just clear of the vegetation, and 
again as high as a house, in company with their Oriental cousin and white- 
rumped Swifts (Cypselus pad ficus), catching something, but I could not see 
what. They often fly and caU during moonlight nights. They leave us at 
* Bennett, Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., Vol. X., p. 168, 1886. 
t Ramsay, i6., Vol. VII., p. 410, 1883. 
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