PIED EGRET. 
Eggs, dutch ? ; uniform pale green ; axis 41 mm., diameter 35. 
Breeding-season. Not recorded. 
Mr. J. P. Rogers, writing from Wyndham, North-west Australia, says he 
saw the first two birds on October 24th, 1908, and by December a large flock 
had arrived, after the rain, but no birds were seen near Derby. They were 
also collected on Melville Island and on Hall’s Creek, North-west Australia, 
during March and April, 1909 ; and I have a very nice adult male from Cape 
York given me by Dr. William MacgiUivray. 
The immature spoken of by Gould as belonging to this species is 
undoubtedly so, and Sharpe was wrong in considering it an adult. 
The immature have the nuchal crest small and white ; the feathers on 
the back of the head first become dark bluish-grey, the forehead stiU being 
white ; in the next stage the forehead and under-surface become slaty-black. 
The adult bird figured and described was collected at Parry’s Creek, 
North-west Australia, on March 28th, 1909, by Mr. J. P. Rogers. 
In the Proc. Zool. Soc. (Lond.) 1858, p. 188, Gray described a bird as 
Ardea aruensis. In the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum, 
Vol. XXVI., p. 113, 1898, Sharpe, concluding this was adult on account of 
the presence of a crest, kept it quite distinct from Gould’s Ardea picata 
and figured it on pi. 1b. The receipt of many specimens from Australia 
has shown this conclusion to be incorrect and that the coloration of 
A. aruensis is immature. Van Oort has arrived at the same results from 
an investigation of New Guinea {Nova Guinea, Vol. IX., p. 541, 1909) 
birds, so that A. aruensis Gray and A. picata Gould are undoubtedly 
conspecific. Gould’s name is older but it is preoccupied, and Sharpe’s 
new name of flavirostris is considerably antedated by Gray’s name. The 
few specimens I have been able to examine show the Aru bird to be 
darker, but the species-name is aruensis, the Australian bird being only 
separable as a subspecies with the name here used. 
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