BLACK-SHOULDERED KITE. 
them reared a brood of young in a tall wattle bush at Point Cloates : the nest 
was about 8 feet from the ground, and the ground below was littered with 
ejected pellets by the birds. These pellets were largely composed of bones 
of mice.^’ 
Gould’s notes are worth reproducing as relating to a time when New 
South Wales, etc., was less settled than now and consequently bird-life was 
more natural and observations more easily taken. “ The Elanus axillaris is a 
summer visitant to the southern portions of the Australian continent, over 
which it is very widely but thinly dispersed, being found at Swan River on 
the west coast, at Moreton Bay on the east, and over all the intervening 
country. In its disposition it is much less courageous than the other 
members of the Australian Falconidoe, and, as its feeble bill and legs would 
indicate, lives more on insects and reptiles than on birds or quadrupeds. 
I very often observed it flying above the tops of the highest trees, and where 
it appeared to be hawking about for insects ; it was also seen perched upon 
the dead and leafless branches of the Eucalypti, particularly such as were 
isolated from the other trees of the forest, whence it could survey all 
around.” 
Batey {Emu, Vol. VII., p. 3, 1907) noted: “One season in Newham 
Shire (Victoria) some of these Kites appeared, and their identity was proved. 
They and the previous species {E. scriptus) seemed to be out of bounds 
thereabouts.” 
Later, writing of birds about Drouin, Gippsland, Batey added {Emu, 
Vol. IX., p. 241, 1910) : “ Once some appeared and were quite new to 
residents in my vicinage.” 
Ramsay wrote : “ During the last six years several pairs of these 
Hawks have been known to breed on the Jindah Estate, on the Mary River, 
in Queensland, but it was only in November last (1877) that a pair gave my 
brother (Mr. John Ramsay) an opportunity of taking their nest and eggs. 
The nest in question was placed among the topmost forked branches bf a 
FUndersia, and, as usual, composed of sticks and twigs ; it was, however, 
a bulky structure, as is often the case with Australian Hawks’ nests. The 
eggs were three in number, but my brother assures me that four is the correct 
number for a sitting.” 
Campbell {Nests and Eggs Austr. Birds, Vol. I., p. 27, 1901) wrote : “ The 
last specimens I happened to observe in Victoria were a beautiful pair which 
were hawking over the rich alluvial flats of Bacchus Marsh, 28 March, 1899.” 
Mr. S. W. Jackson’s notes continue: “Black-shouldered Kites arrived 
here (South Grafton, New South Wales) in great numbers in May (1897), and 
it was quite a common occurrence to notice a pair of birds on almost every 
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