SQUAEE-TAILED KITE. 
to ascertain its contents, and to my surprise found a long oval egg unbroken 
inside it. This egg was marked like an unusually well marked specimen 
of the ground lark, and puzzled me, until on examining it through a 
magnifier, I found that it was really an egg of Cuculus inornatus (Pallid 
Cuckoo) that was completely covered over evenly with fragments of egg 
shells of Anthus australis, several of which the Kite had eaten too.” 
Though ranging on the West as far south as Broome Hill, it does not 
come south save as a rare straggler on the East of Australia. Thus, 
Mr. Edwin Ashby has written me : “I send you particulars of the 
occurrence of a female Lophoictinia isura at Blackwood, South Australia, 
on the I2th October, 1913. It has never been recorded in the Adelaide 
district before, as far as any of our' South Australian ornithologists are 
aware. None of them had any skins. In the crop were three small 
mihatched birds, probably sparrows, also fragments of egg shell : in 
stomach were one unhatched bird and egg-sheU, apparently a Myzantha or 
Anthochcera, and fragments of a mature bird, species doubtful. It is not 
only remarkable that this bird should be so far out of its ordinary habitat, 
but also evidence of a most undignified behaviour on the part of this 
huge bird : to come down to robbing bird’s nests of eggs and unfledged 
birds is a prostitution of its great powers of flight.” 
In the Nov. Zool., Vol. XVIII., p. 250, 1912, I separated the Western 
bird on account of its smaller size and darker upper and lower coloration. 
Few specimens are further available, but these confirm this, and for the 
present the status of the Western form is doubtful. In the present place 
I am not admitting it as valid, but it seems a form that will later 
certainly gain acceptance. 
An explanation of the synonym Milvus pacificus Strickland is necessary. 
In the OrnitJi. Synonyms Strickland made use of this term basing it upon 
Falco pacificus Latham, who described a bird under that name in the 
Suppl. Index Ornith., p. xiii., 1801. This was founded on his account o^\the 
Pacific Falcon described in the Second Supplement to the General Synopsis, 
p. 54, 1801, as follows : “ The length of this bird is from sixteen to eighteen 
inches ; the bill, legs and irides yellow ; the head and most part of the neck 
are white, but the rest of the plumage in general is brown, blotched on the 
back with dark spots, and marked on the belly (which is paler than above, 
and inclining to yellow) with black streaks. The tail is long, even at 
the end, crossed with seven or eight oblique black bars ; the quiUs are also 
barred as the tail, with the ends black. This was met with in New 
South Wales, and probably is not a numerous species, as only one has been 
shot, though others have been now and then seen.” 
VOL. V. 
185 
