THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
in fact, they seem to prefer this dry, hard clay, and often drill their nesting- 
burrows half way down a steep bank, where the clay has almost formed 
into sandstone. They are rather late breeders, as of twenty nests I have 
examined containing eggs, two were in October, nine in November, five 
in December, and four in January. It is not a very unusual thing, when 
hunting for these nests, to find the sitting bird dead upon the eggs. 
Some will not flush from the nest ; I have several times enlarged the 
entrance hole sujSiciently to get my hand in, and taken the eggs from 
beneath the sitting bird : they do not show any signs of fright, but some- 
times jam themselves tightly up at the extreme end of the chamber. 
They have a single mournful note, uttered at short intervals, but kept 
up for a long time, usually while perched upon a stump, or a dead tree.” 
Mr. Sandland wrote me from Balah, South Australia : “ Several pairs 
come about every year. They appear in August and leave in January. 
I have taken nests in an old lime-kiln, in a bank where drain had cut 
into a tank, and also from trees. When taken in trees it was always 
where a large limb had broken ofi, and the birds had timnelled into 
the decayed wood in the standing trunk. I have always found five eggs 
in a full clutch.” 
Mr. Tom Carter has sent me the following notes : “ In your ‘ Reference 
List ’ this species is given as occurring only in Northern Territory and 
North-west Australia. It is, however, not uncommon at Kellerberin, 
about 100 miles east of Perth, and therefore occurs in Mid-west Australia. 
On January 9, 1903 in company with Mr Bruce W. Leake, we dug into 
the nesting cavity of a Red-backed Kingfisher, and found five eggs, much 
incubated. The hole had been excavated in the side of a trench dug 
for conveying the Coolgardie water-pij)es. Several other birds of this 
species were noted on that visit. The country was mostly covered with 
Salmon and Gimlet Gum timber. Red-backed Kingfishers were common 
in the Gascoyne district and inland from Point Cloates. In October 1887 
a nest containing five eggs was opened out in the side of a white-ant hill 
in thick mallee scrub along the telegraph line near the south end of Shark’s 
Bay (FHnt Cliff). October 2, 1913. I examined a nesting cavity in the 
bank of the Gascoyne River near Carnarvon. It contained five incubated 
eggs, placed about two feet in from the aperture. Nesting material w£is 
very slight, of fine dry grass and weeds, but very probably these had been 
originally placed there by Black and White Swallows {CheramcBca) as 
several of their nesting cavities were close round. The breeding-season 
about the Gascoyne is mostly in September. The birds have a mournful 
whistling note. From examination of gizzards they feed largely on Scorpion,^, 
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