ORANGE-BELLIED PARROT. 
neck like the top of the head ; throat, breast, sides of the body, and abdomen 
yellowish-green ; vent orange ; thighs, under tail-coverts, and lower aspect of 
tail bright yellow ; under wing-coverts ultramarine blue ; quill-lining dark brown. 
Iris brown, feet mealy-grey, bill blue-horn. Total length 220 mm. ; culmen 10, 
wing 104, tail 103, tarsus 14. Figured. Collected in New South Wales. 
Adult female. Similar to the adult male. Collected at Geelong, Victoria, on the 16th 
June, 1912. 
Immature. Have the frontal band only faintly indicated ; the under-surface being grass 
green. They also have the orange vent. 
Nest. A hole in a tree. 
Eggs. Clutch, four to five ; white ; 21-23 mm. by 17-18. 
Breeding-season. November to January. 
In his first Supplement to the General Synopsis of Birds , 1787, p. 62, Latham 
described the 44 Orangebellied Parrakeet. Length seven inches and a half : 
breadth twelve. Bill yellowish-green, head, breast, upper part of the body, 
and lesser wing-coverts, dull green ; greater coverts rich blue on the exterior 
sides ; the interior dusky marked with a white spot ; lower belly orange ; tail 
green ; ends of the four outmost feathers fine yellow ; legs greenish. Native 
place uncertain. Communicated by Mr. Pennant.” For this species in the 
Index Ornith., 1790, p. 97, he proposed the name Psittacus chrysogaster. 
We know now that Pennant secured many specimens brought back by 
the members of Cook’s Expeditions, so that probably this was a bird obtained 
in Tasmania on Cook’s Third voyage. 
The description, on account of the lack of locality, was not recognised at 
once, and when Gould received the species he distinguished it as new, naming 
it Euphema aurantia. He wrote of it as follows : 44 Although the present bird 
is not so elegant in form, nor graced with so brilliant a frontal band as several 
others of the group, it has received ample compensation in the rich orange 
mark that adorns the under surface, a character by which it may be distin- 
guished from every other known species. Like the Euphema chrysostoma, it 
is a summer visitant to Tasmania. I observed it sparingly dispersed in the 
neighbourhood of Hobart Town and New Norfolk, but found it in far greater 
abundance on the Actseon Islands, at the entrance of D’Entrecasteaux 
Channel. These small and uninhabited islands are covered with grasses and 
scrub, intermingled with a species of Barilla, nearly allied to Atriplex halimus ; 
and almost the only landbird that enlivens these solitary spots is the present 
beautiful Parrakeet ; I frequently flushed small flocks from among the grass, 
when they almost immediately alighted on the Barilla bushes around me, 
their sparkling orange bellies forming a striking contrast with the green of the 
other parts of their plumage and the silvery foliage of the plant upon which 
they rested. I made many unsuccessful attempts to discover their breeding 
439 
