THE BIEDS OF AUSTEALIA. 
limb, peering round at me, first on one side, and then on the other, its actions 
and pose were most Parrot-like. I have not seen it before or since.” 
From Cape York Barnard wrote : “ One pair observed early in the season, 
and later was noticed feeding three large young birds. The only pair 
observed.” 
North gives some notes regarding the nidification of this bird in the 
Austr. Mus. Spec. Cat., No. 1, and I quote the following: “Mr. Savidge 
remarks : ‘ I witnessed a novel performance of the Crested Hawk to-day. 
During flight one of these birds, by several sharp flaps of its wings, ascended 
quite perpendicularly in the air for six or eight feet, then reversing itself came 
rolling down again for about the same distance. This performance it repeated 
many times, uttering the while a peculiar note unlike that made by any other 
species of Australian Acciptres. At times these birds soar very high : I have 
also seen them pick something ofl the leaves and branches of trees while on 
the wing. . . . The Crested Hawk is sparingly dispersed in the Clarence Biver 
District, where it is a resident species, and is a most useful bird, eating large 
numbers of locusts, beetles, etc. It is frequently shot by the settlers, their 
utility being quite unknown to most of them.’ Mr. Savidge’s account of the 
‘ tumbling ’ propensities of this bird is endorsed by Mr. Eobert Grant, who 
wrote : ‘ I found Baza subcristata in the scrubs of the Upper Bellinger Eiver, 
near Boat Harbour, while collecting for the Trustees of the Australian Museum 
in August 1892. In the early morning, close to my camp on the river, a large 
bird used to fly over from the scrub on the opposite side, and in so doing 
would turn over on its back and strike upwards at some imaginary foe ; 
this it used to do every fifty or sixty yards, all the while uttering a clear 
whistling cry. I knew it was a bird of prey of some species, so one morning 
I got into a favourable position and waited for its coming, shot it, and to 
my surprise, when I picked it up, found it was a Crested Hawk ; this specimen 
is in the Australian Museum Collection. Previous to this I had shot this 
species on the tablelands near Herberton, North Queensland. We used to find 
them on the edge of the dense scrubs, but never far in from the forest lands. 
Among the contents of the stomach of the bird I shot on the Bellinger Eiver 
were the remains of insects and portion of a bandicoot.’ ” 
Though little has been recorded about its habits, it has a somewhat 
voluminous scientific literature, through the fact that it is only subspecifically 
separable from the forms inhabiting the islands directly to the north ; and 
as Gould was the first to describe any of these subspecies, his becomes the 
species name. 
I will only note the conclusions of two workers regarding these northern 
forms, as they are mainly of technical interest. 
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