APPENDIX. 
and to that end paid so much per scalp. The hunters used to shoot all large 
and small, only skinning the former. The immense amount of offal caused 
these birds to remain in great numbers all the year. These Kites apparent^ 
preferred fresh meat, as when a hunter went out in the morning, he would 
have a following of Kites which would accompany him until some animals 
were shot and skinned. Sometimes while skinning a wallaby I have seen 
30 to 40 Kites perched all around some within 10 yards awaiting for a meal, 
and this at a place where there were scores of carcases in all stages, from 
fresh to putrid, so apparently they prefer freshly -killed meat: perhaps it is 
the blood that draws them. At Marngle Creek a few of these birds came to 
feed on the offal of a beast that was killed, and at Mungi only one Kite 
was seen.” 
Black-breasted Buzzard . . . . Gypoictinia melanosterna, ante, p. 188. 
Mr. J. B. White’s notes, written about 1875, are of great value : 
“ Though I have seen this bird near the coast, it seems more numerous in the 
MitcheU District in Queensland than elsewhere, though nowhere common, 
and from its excessive shyness the most difficult to procure of any of the 
Australian Raptores. From its carrion-feeding propensities, however, a 
great number have of late years, since the wholesale system of laying out 
poison for native dogs was introduced, been destroyed, and in the sheep 
districts it is fast becoming extinct. This bird is almost constantly on the wing, 
soaring slowly round with the wings turned upwards at an angle with the 
body, much like the Wedge-tailed Eagle, and is often mistaken for that bird ; 
its food seems to consist of lizards, small quadrupeds and any dead animal 
it can find ; during the lambing-season it frequents the lambing ground for 
the sake of any dead lambs it can pick up, but never as far as I have seen 
attacks them while alive, and consequently does no harm. Even when 
attracted by food it shows the same caution as at other times : at a person’s 
approach it circles round, each circle getting further off, and if ^followed 
moves off altogether. This shyness seems natural to it, as it displays the 
same caution in country only just occupied by whites and where it could 
have had no experience of firearms. The nest is a large flat mass of sticks 
like that of the Wedge-tailed Eagle, but not so large, generally in the fork 
of a tree on the banks of a creek or in the neighbourhood of a scrub. One 
I examined on the Barcoo contained one young bird covered with white down, 
through which the feathers were beginning to show, brown with bright rufous 
edges, both above and below, giving it a striated appearance ; this was 
unluckily killed ; the irides were dark, the base of the beak pale blue, feet 
and legs bluish. 
419 
