GOLDEN-SHOULDERED PARROT. 
Phillipps. A coloured plate drawn by P. J. Smit from living specimens in the 
London Zoological Gardens accompanies this, and the birds figured are the 
Gouldian form. Phillipps had two specimens himself and gives a detailed 
description of the species, male and female, and wrote, “A light yellow band 
across the forehead, frontal band and wash around the eyes yellowish white.” 
There can be no hesitation in concluding that these were true chrysopterygius , 
but we have not the least clue to the locality whence these came, and 
apparently ail the later consignments were from Pine Creek or thereabouts, 
and these have been just as certainly dissimilis. We are still without 
knowledge as to the existence of Gould’s form, but it was apparently still 
living twenty years ago. 
Barnard, in the Emu, Yol. XIV., p. 46, 1914, has pointed out that he was 
the first to re-discover the species, writing as follows under the name Psephotus 
dissimilis : “ Skins of these birds were first obtained by me at Pine Creek, 
N. T., in September, 1896. They were supposed to be Psephotus chrysopterygius. 
This, however, was wrong, and two years later the Pine Creek bird was named 
as above from further skins obtained from that place. I thus missed the 
honour of being the first to describe this bird, though I was the first to obtain 
the skins. P. chrysopterygius was obtained somewhere in the Normanton 
district, and does not appear to have been found since it was described by 
Gould. P. dissimilis was fairly plentiful on the dry spinifex and stringy bark 
ridges of the lower McArthur. A series of skins was obtained.” 
Mr. Edwin Ashby has written me : “ Psephotellus dissimilis Collett. I 
received two pairs of this lovely grass parrot in January 1914, collected by 
Mr. C. E. May at Union Bore, near Pine Creek, Northern Territory.” He 
informed me that they nested in White Ants’ nests (Termites). These strange 
nests are fully the height of a man : the parrots make a hole in the side of 
the ants’ structure and lay their eggs there. 
This note explains the “ breeding of P. pulcherrimus ” in this district^ as 
quoted by Le Souef. The descriptions of eggs given in those papers are 
worthless, as in the present instance he described both the eggs of P. pulcherrimus 
and P. chrysopterygius from localities where the birds do not occur, and we can 
now see that neither record is of any value, as the first is very probably based 
on the present one while the second is not referable to anything I can guess. 
Again I have to deplore North’s work in the Austr. Mus. Spec. Cat., No, 
1, Vol. III., where he omits this bird without any explanation, not even 
referring to his own cucullatus. It is remarkable that such blemishes should 
mar a supposedly authoritative work, as even if the writer disputed the 
records he should have noted their existence. 
In the Avicultural Magazine for February, 1914, p. 133, G. A. Heumann 
VOL. VI. 
429 
