AUSTRALIAN RED-LEGGED GANNET. 
Adult male. Similar to the adult female. 
Nest. A platform of sticks about 8 to 12 inches across, with the depression in the centre 
about one inch (MacgiUivray). 
Eggs. Clutch one ; ground colour bluish-white, covered with lime. Axis 66-68 mm. ; 
diameter 38-40. 
Breeding-season. May and July to September (Macgilhvray). 
Regarding this bird Gould said he would have liked to retain his 
name of ruhripes, “ did not the law of 'priority demand that it sho'uld he 
otherwise.’^ Of course Gould was a great upholder of the law of priority, 
and I am pleased to be able to use his name for the Australian form 
of this species. 
The only observations made in connection with this bird in Australian 
waters seem to be due to the Macgillivrays (at an interval of sixty odd years) 
at the same place. 
Gould gave the following account : “ I am . . . indebted to 
Mr. Macgilhvray for the foUowing notes, as weU as for a carefully executed 
diagram of the bill and face, by means of which I have been enabled to colour 
the soft parts correctly. ‘ With the exception,’ says Mr. Macghlivray, ‘ of 
one bird which perched on the rigging, and was caught while at sea in the 
neighbourhood of the Keeling Islands, we found this species only on Raine’s 
Islet, a vegetated sand-bank in the line of the Great Barrier Reef. When we 
landed there on the 29th of May, it appeared to me that the breeding-season 
was then over, but I was fortunate enough to find a solitary bird sitting upon 
its nest, which contained a single egg. The nest consisted of a few roots of a 
creeper common on the island, forming a platform eighteen inches in diameter 
laid upon a tuft of herbage. A few days after this the Gannets, having been 
much molested, entirely deserted the island during the day, returning at 
night in a body of several hundreds, to roost on the ground and low bushes 
near the centre of the island.’ Mr. MacgiUivray observed that the colouring 
of the bUl and soft parts also varies with the age of the individual ; in the 
first stage the bill is of a delicate bluish-pink, the pink tint predominating 
at the base of the upper mandible, the bare patch about the eye of a duU leaden 
hue, the pouch flesh-coloured ; in the second, the colouring of these parts is 
similar but somewhat brighter, and ultimately the hides become grey, and 
the legs and feet vermilion.” 
MacgiUivray, the elder, was at Raine Island in 1844-5 and no further 
observations seem to have been made untU Macgillivray, the younger, visited 
Raine Island in 1910 and gave the following account : 
Sula piscatrix MacgUlivray, Emu, Vol. X., p. 225, 1910 ; Raine Island. 
“ The Red-legged Gannet nests in groups in different parts of the island. 
211 
