AUSTRALIAN BROWN GANNET (BOOBY). 
(No. 3, Ashmore Sandbanks, Great Barrier Reef), we notice a number of 
these birds, and decide to land, and also to anchor for the night, the wind 
and tide making it impossible for us to reach the shelter of the Barrier. We 
have a large escort of Gannets by the time we anchor. On landing, most of 
the top of the bank is seen to be occupied by Brown Gannets. Most of 
these rise as we approach, leaving about 30 sitting birds. These permit of 
a close approach before leaving their nests — as well, too, for no sooner does 
a bird quit its nest than a Gull seizes an egg and makes off with it. As usual 
they are constantly on the watch to steal other birds’ eggs in all the rookeries 
visited by us. There are about 50 nests, 30 of which contain two eggs each 
and the rest one — ^mostly incomplete clutches or reduced by the Gulls. 
Numbers of the nests are just being scraped out. The nests are merely a 
depression scraped in the sand, some hollows having bits of straw, stick, 
coral or shell gathered round them ; dimensions : 1 foot in diameter and 4 
inches in depth. This rookery has not long been occupied, as the eggs are 
all either fresh or at an early stage of incubation. This species is also 
nesting in smaller numbers on No. 2 Sandbank. . . . We discern a cloud 
of sea-birds over the island (Raine Island) and under an escort of Brown 
{Sula leucogaster), Red-legged {Sula piscatrix), and Masked Gannets (Sula 
cyanops), we soon sight the island itself. We are puzzled at first with the 
Red-legged Gannet, as there are more immature than mature birds flying, 
and the difference in colouring is considerable. Nearing the anchorage at 
the north-west corner, we are surrounded by a vast number of Gannets 
(mature and immature), Frigate-Birds, Noddies, Sooty and Brown-winged 
Terns and Gulls. . . . When we land the birds rise in a dense cloud until 
the air is full of them and still there seem to be thousands of old and young 
birds remaining on the ground. . . . Fully nine-tenths of the nesting birds 
are Brown Gannets, which are all over the island, some sitting on either fresh 
or incubating eggs, small naked young or young in down, or feeding nearly 
fully-fledged birds, while many are just starting to scoop out their nests in 
the sand, these depressions varying from 8 inches to 12 inches in diameter 
and 3 or 4 inches m depth, sometimes with sticks, bits of coral, shells, or 
dirt collected round them. Many are on bare coral rock, or on the pig face 
flattened down. Most of the nests contain a pair of eggs, there being great 
variation in the size and shape of the eggs, though the two eggs in any one 
nest usually match. The young birds are hatched with eyes closed, with only 
an indication of down on head, back, humeral, femoral, and each pectoral 
region. The eyes open very soon, and the birds become covered with whitish 
down at an early stage, the beak and legs being of a pale slatey-grey, much 
the same colour as the naked skin : the gape also a pale slate colour. They 
VOL. IV. 
233 
