YELLOW-BANDED PARROT. 
lacks the red patch on the forehead, is, as far as my experience goes, an 
inhabitant of Salmon-gum ( Eucalyptus salmonophloia) country. Its notes are 
very similar to those of its ally, but are sufficiently distinct to be recognised 
as those of a different bird. I do not know of any difference in habits. I 
have met with the subspecies in the type-locality Norseman, as well as in the 
Merredin district.” 
These latter would more probably be B. z. connectens. 
Mr. Edwin Ashby has written me : 44 B. z. semitorquatus . In May, 1889, 
these birds were very numerous at Eticup, West Australia, and were doing a 
great deal of harm to the newly sown wheat ; a farmer emptied out a wheat 
sack more than half full of dead birds of this species which had been killed 
that morning through eating poisoned wheat. Through that part of West 
Australia they are called 4 Twenty-eights,’ from their call, which is a 
whistle of three notes, the last one drawn out, the combination giving some 
resemblance to the utterance of the aforesaid word.” 
Mr. A. W. Milligan {Emu, Vol. II., p. 75, 1902), writing on the birds of 
the Margaret River district, South-west Australia, stated : “ Barnardius semi- 
torquatus. These birds were very abundant everywhere. They and the 
Leaden Crow-Shrikes were more in evidence in the coastal hills and scrubs 
than any other birds. Within an oblong area of, say, three miles by one, 
there must have been hundreds of thousands of them. Some early birds 
were just beginning to nest. A lipped hole in a karri tree is usually chosen 
for the purpose. On the occasion of my second visit the birds had evidently 
retired into the forests, for they were not nearly so numerous on the coast.” 
Quoy and Gaimard figured a large green Parrot from King George’s Sound 
as Psittacus semitorquatus. Though the colouring is bad the name has been 
accepted, as there is no other bird at all like this one. The coastal birds are 
very green above, very large, and mostly green below, very little yellow being 
seen on the lower breast. North has commented on the variation, noting that 
some specimens do show a yellow band across the lower breast, but concluded 
this was a senile state. He also gives Masters’ experience regarding the 
variation, and quotes Carter. 
In the Ibis , 1910, Ogilvie-Grant, reporting upon a collection of birds made 
in West Australia, discriminated two species, B. zonarius and B. semitorquatus, 
recorded ; 44 It is evident at Beverley the ranges of B. semitorquatus and B. 
zonarius meet, and probably the birds to some extent interbreed, which would 
account for the intermediate forms to be found there.” 
The facts suggest that semitorquatus can only be considered a coastal and 
larger form of zonarius, and I accepted that view in 1911, and all the material 
since endorses that view. The species, hereafter dealt with, was even suppressed 
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