THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
groves every evening at dusk. I did not know the call ; it sounded as if some 
one was tapping the end of a log with a hammer. This knocking could be 
heard for a considerable distance. This evening I saw a bird flying into a 
mangrove just at dusk. I fired and got one of these birds. This bird was 
making the knocking sound. 
“ Nov. 8, 1911. To-day I found two young ones : the old bird flew up, and 
on looking to see if there were any eggs I saw the two young : they were crouched 
down just above the highwater mark of that morning. I dropped my hat over 
them and looked for the old bird ; she had only flown a few yards and was 
flapping and struggling on the ground. I stepped back a few yards and the 
old one flew into a mangrove close to the young ones. Dec. 16, 1911. Are 
still heard occasionally at dusk. Jan. 20, 1912. None were seen on my way 
over to the north side nor on my way back, and none were seen or heard at 
the locality ten miles S.E. of Snake Bay. None have been heard since my 
return here. Feb. 5, 1912. Several have been heard in the last few nights. 
Excepting the bird seen with the young ones I never saw one of this species 
in dayhght until to-day, when I flushed one in a dense patch of mangroves. 
These birds seem to stick to the mangroves here : they are usually heard either 
in or on the outsldrts of mangrove thickets or else on the foreshore.” 
Mr. Edwin Ashby wrote me that he had received several specimens from 
Port Keats, Northern Territory, from Mr. C. E. May, who stated they were 
common there. 
Its scientific history is almost as brief. In the Catalogue of the Birds in 
the British Museum, Vol. XVI., 1892, Hartert gave as Hah. of the species : “The 
typical form is found in Queensland and Northern Australia, many of the 
Papuan Islands, throughout the Malay Archipelago, in Cochin China, Siam, 
the Malay Peninsula, and Tenasserim. Specimens from Tenasserim, Burmah, 
Assam, and Manipur are more or less alhed to C. alhonotatus, which, in fact, 
is merely a western subspecies of C. macrurus. At a time when very meagre 
materials were available for comparison. Dr. Sharpe separated the small dark 
form from Northern Borneo’ under the name of C. salvadorii. Now, however, 
since large series from almost all locahties are in the British Museum, it becomes 
obvious that it is impossible to separate the birds inhabiting North Borneo 
as a species. They belong to the well-pronounced dark insular forms. Some 
specimens are exactly similar to those from Waigiou and other islands. The 
wing measures 7 to 7*4 inches.” 
When I prepared my “Reference List to the Birds of Australia” (published 
in the Nov. Zool. Vol. XVIII., Jan. 1912, I regarded the Australian forms 
as representing two subspecies, thus (p. 291) — 
Caprimulgus macrurus yorki. 
288 
