14 
LEABBUATEB’S COCKATOO. 
on tlie back and wings, wliich are all but white: the long crest of 
narrow pointed feathery plumes is a very magnificent affair, red at the 
base, followed by an inch or so of bright canary yellow, then red again 
with tips of purest white; and the bird appears to be conscious that 
its chief charm lies in this appendage, for it is never weary of displaying 
it for the admiration of all and sundry beholders. The beak is of a 
pale grey- white; the upper mandible strangely sinuated and toothed; the 
feathers at the immediate base of the bill are crimson, forming a nai’row 
band or fillet. The under surface of the wings is rich crimson red. 
The legs and toes are dark grey, the scales distinctly marked by lines 
of a lighter shade of the same colour. 
The female bears a general resemblance to her lord, but is paler on 
the breast; the irides, however, are the surest indication of the sex of 
a given bird, as in the female they are reddish brown, and jet black 
in the male. The late Mr. John Gould, in his magnificent work on 
The Birds of Australia, represents two of these Cockatoos, which he 
calls male and female, with red-brown irides, and the same thing occurs 
in his illustration of the Eosy Cockatoo [Psittacus roseicapillus) , so that 
he does not appear to have noticed this distinction: but such trifling 
omissions are easily accounted foi’, and in nowise detract from the 
sterling merit of the grandest work on ornithological Australia in the 
language. 
There is no instance on record of this Cockatoo having bred in 
Europe, and it is such a very shy and suspicious bird, we scarcely 
think there will be, until some enthusiastic amateur, gifted with wealth 
and much patience, constructs a large and strong aviary, appropriately 
furnished with the trunk and limbs of a dead tree, and devotes it solely 
to the use of a pair of these splendid birds; or turns a couple out into 
a wood, far from the guns of bovine-brained agriculturists; when, as 
likely as not, the Leadbeaters, with a perverseness characteristic of 
their family, will separate, each contracting an alliance with a partner 
of a different kind, and bring up broods of monstrous hybrids, as they 
are recorded to have done at Northrepps Hall, rather than consent to 
perpetuate their race in a foreign country and uncongenial clime. 
Vio-ors, who was the first English writer to describe this Cockatoo, 
named it after a friend, Mr. Leadbeater, well-known to ornithologists, 
and has left us a most interesting account of a truly interesting bird. 
Quoting from the Notes of Mr. Caley, he says:— “These birds are 
shy and not easily approached. The flesh of the young is accounted 
good eating. I have heard from the natives that it makes its nest in 
the rotten limbs of trees, of nothing more than the vegetable mould 
formed by the decayed parts of the bough; that it has no more than 
