THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
a snake. Its food consists of fish, aquatic insects, newts, frogs, etc. After 
feeding it perches on a snag of some fallen tree in the water, or on the naked 
branch of a tree in the forest nigh to its haunts, often on one of the greatest 
height, where it sits motionless for hours together. While thus perched it 
is much more easily approached and shot than on the water, where it is wary 
in the extreme.” 
Elsey wrote to Gould an account which was first published in the Proc. 
Zool Soc. (Lend.) 1857, p. 28, and then incorporated in the Handbook and 
thence transferred to CampbelFs Nests and Eggs^ and I now here reprint it 
to emphasize the scarcity of observations during a period of over fifty years. 
Elsey’s letter concerned the locality round the Victoria River Depot, North- 
west Australia, and he stated : “ The Plotus is common here, and excellent 
eating. During February and March it was incubating. It chooses large 
trees that hang over the water above or through the mangroves, and in 
these a number of them build a colony of large coarse flattish nests of dead 
sticks and twigs, which appear, from the quantity of dirt about them and 
their stained appearance, to be used year after year. Each season they place 
in the centre a few fresh green leaves, and on these lay three or four white 
eggs, with a Very earthy opaque but brittle shell: the lining membrane is 
of a blue-grey colour ; they are rather smaller and more elongated than a 
hen’s egg. We have enjoyed many fine meals of these eggs, sometimes 
getting from forty to fifty in a single tree. Both birds sit. The male is of a 
glossy greenish-black, with a little brownish-grey on the wings and wing- 
coverts. The female has a white under-surface, but is otherwise similar.” 
The birds figured and described were collected at Derby, North-west 
Australia, in 1898. 
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