TAWNY FROGMOUTH. 
mouth as it sails through tho air, there is little chance of missing the insects 
and moths upon which it feeds, and, being a night bird, there is abundance of 
this food, especially in the spring and summer time ; it is therefore a most useful 
bird in eating up many night-flying moths, which do damage to the orchard, 
garden and fleld. This bird is often confounded with the Morepork or 
Boobook Owl, as it was believed by some that it was this bird that 
said ^ Morepork ’ at night, and by others that both the birds said this 
note. Years ago I wrote vigorously upon the matter and I had a hard job 
to convince many of our Australian ornithologists that this bird never had 
that note and the Boobook Owl was the bird that made it, but I think at 
last they accept it as correct ; having had close observations of both the birds, 
I know them well. I have seen this bird on Eyre’s Peninsula, South Australia, 
on several of my visits there, where it was seen breeding. At the camp at 
Warunda, in October, 1909, these birds were observed with fresh eggs and also 
large young in the nest. I have noted them in the Mount Lofty Ranges, South 
Australia, also.” 
Mr. Edwin Ashby’s notes read : “ This species is common in the Adelaide 
Hills. Some birds are very dark with chestnut blotches on the plumage ; others 
are almost a uniform grey. I have also met with it in Southern Tasmania. In 
reference to the cry of this bird I have known them emit a sort of hissing 
sound when they are disturbed in some hollow log, but my friend Mr. Wells, of 
Latrobe, Tasmania, who is a bird observer, answers me that he has watched a 
Podargus (sitting on a fence) which made the cry ‘ Morepork ’ accredited to 
the Boobook Owl ; he saw it open its beak as it emitted the soimd and he 
shot the bird in the act. I myself on one occasion shot a bird that apparently 
was making this cry and found on picking up the specimen that it was the 
Boobook Owl.” 
There are few notes regarding the typical subspecies, which may become a 
rare bird ; its colour- variation seems the most pronounced, and red birds seem 
most highly coloured from this locality. So far as my results show, this ruddy 
coloration is a feminine feature, but not a sexual character. That is, all the 
red birds I have examined have been females, but all females are not red. I 
have observed also that throughout Australia the birds showing a pronokneed 
rusty coloration have been females, so that we have here an interesting item. 
I further suggest that this rufous coloration is a juvenile phase which has been 
lost in the plumage changes now seen, but is apt to recur in the females under 
certain conditions when the environmental complexes are suitable. This 
theory is borne out by consideration of the species P. papuensis Q. and G., 
as I And the ruddiest specimens in that group also to be females, and this may 
also account for the peculiar coloration of P. plumiferus Gould. I can only 
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