AUSTRALIAN LONG-BILLED PLOVER. 
near the tip ; secondaries white, obliquely banded with brown, the long innermost 
secondaries like the back ; tail-feathers brown banded with white, the white band 
preceded by a dark narrow cross-line ; lores, sides of crown, and a line under the 
eye black like the sides of the nape and lower-cheeks ; a white line above and below 
the eye which unites behind the latter and extends backward on to the sides of 
the nape ; chin and throat white ; breast grey, becoming paler and inclining to 
buffy-white on the abdomen ; thighs and under tail-coverts buff ; axillaries and 
under wing-coverts white ; bill black, operculum at base of bill, eye-lid and 
naked skin yellow ; feet yellowish-grey. Total length 530 mm., culmen 76, 
wing 280, tail 120, tarsus 95. 
Adult female. Similar to the adult male but smaller ; culmen 72, tarsus 90. 
Nest. None made. 
Eggs. Clutch, one or two ; ground-colour cream-white, streaked and marked all over 
with dark olive-brown, some of the markings being large and bold without 
assuming any regular form, and others mere blotches about an eighth of an inch 
in diameter, while many of the streaks were as fine as hair, and were of a crooked 
or zig-zag form ; axis 61-66 mm., diameter 44-46 (Gould). 
Breeding-season. October. 
Mr. J. P. Rogers, writing from North-west Australia, says : “ Two single 
birds have been on the beach in front of my camp. When at Carnot Bay, 
about 70 miles up the coast from Broome, I only saw about six pairs of 
this bird. As I was on the beach about fourteen days a month for seven 
months, they seem rather rare. Both at Derby and Carnot Bay they were 
always on the beach. They are usually in pairs, sometimes two or three 
pairs are seen together, but I have never seen odd numbers.” 
This species was also collected on Melville Island. 
Mr. Edwin Ashby records a pair of eggs from Port Keats, Northern 
Territorv. 
%/ 
Mr. Tom Carter writes : “ I have never seen this bird outside the tropics. 
There were certain places on the beach of the North West Cape where a pair 
or two of these birds could always be seen. At one of these places I found 
a fresh egg on October 25th, 1900. It was laid in a slight depression without 
any nesting material, on coarse shingle on the top of a high ridge of that 
material, within reach of the sea spray at high tide, and could easily have 
been overlooked as a rather larger piece of stone than the surrounding ones. 
I never saw this species further south than a place about twenty miles 
north of Point Cloates. Lat. 22-30° south, being about one hundred miles 
within the Tropic Hne. The cry is very similar to that of grallarius, but 
rather harsher in tone. The native name is the same for both species, 
viz : Wee-16.’* 
“ A pair of th^se interesting birds frequented the sand-pits in the 
neighbourhood of Cardwell [North Queensland] during the time of my visit ; 
they proved too wary to be approached within gun-shot ; the white on the 
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