THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
similarly marked as are also the innermost secondaries ; outer greater coverts, 
primary-coverts, and flight-quills spotted or blotched with buff, the four outer 
primaries spotted with white and mottled with grey at the tips ; upper tail-coverts 
and tail coarsely mottled with grey and buff on the inner-webs of the outer-feathers 
of the latter ; a white band across the lower throat ; fore-neck and upper-breast 
dark brown mottled with grey ; lower-breast, abdomen, under tail-coverts, sides of 
the body, axillaries, and under wing-coverts barred with buff and dark brown, 
more coarsely marked on the under tail-coverts ; major under wing-coverts and 
under-surface of the quills pale brown with white spots on the primaries and buff 
bars on the secondaries and buff mottlings on the innermost secondaries ; lower 
aspect of the tail dark brown with coarse buff mottlings. Eyes hazel ; feet fleshy- 
brown ; bill slate-grey. Total length 325 mm. ; culmen 12, wing 261, tail 155, 
tarsus 22. Figured. Collected at Olinda, Victoria, on the 12th of October, 1912. 
Adult female. Similar to the adult male. 
Nest. None made, the single egg being deposited on the ground. 
Eggs. Clutch, one. Ground-colour buff or stone, sparingly spotted with black markings, 
some appearing as if beneath the surface 37 to 39 mm. by 26-28. (Dawson River, 
October.) 
Breeding-season. October to December or January. 
In 1827, when Vigors and Horsfield published their good account of Austrahan 
birds from specimens in the Collection of the Linnean Society, they described 
a specimen received from Mr. Caley, under the name Caprirnulgus guttatus, 
which will be next treated. As a footnote they added : “ The following 
species of this genus, which has been kindly lent to us by Mr. Leadbeater for 
description, was received from New Holland, and does not appear to have been 
hitherto recorded ” — ^naming it Caprimulgus alhogularis. 
Gould’s account is the most complete I have met with ; thus he wrote : 
“ During my visit to Australia I had frequent opportunities of observing this 
species. How far it may range over the Australian continent is not known ; 
the south-eastern are the only portions in which it has yet been discovered. 
I have seen specimens in collections formed at Moreton Bay, and I have 
killed three or four individuals of an evening on the cleared lands in the 
neighbourhood of the Upper Hunter, which shows that it is far from being 
a scarce bird in that part of New South Wales. In all probabihty it is only a 
summer visitant in the colony, for it was at this season only that I observed 
it. In the daytime it sleeps on the ground on some dry knoll or open part 
of the forest, and as twilight approaches salhes forth to the open glades and 
small plains or cleared lands in search of insects ; its flight, which is much 
more powerful than that of any other species of the family I have seen, enabling 
it to pass through the air with great rapidity, and to mount up and dart down 
almost at right angles whenever an insect comes within the range of its eye, 
which is so large and full that its powers of vision must be very great. Most 
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