WHITE-HEADED TREERUNNER. 
blackish-brown with pale edgings to some of the feathers and a cinnamon-chestnut 
band across the inner webs of the latter ; tail black tipped with white, which increases 
in extent towards the outermost feathers ; throat dusky-grev; breast, abdomen, 
and sides of body greyish-white with dark shaft-streaks becoming somewhat darker 
and inclining to drab-grey on the lower flanks ; under tail-coverts white with black 
subterminal marks ; axillaries drab-grey; lesser and median under wing-coverts 
blackish, the greater series white ; under-surface of flight-quills dark brown with 
a patch of cinnamon-chestnut ; lower aspect of tail similar to its upper-surface. 
Total lengt h 113 mm.; culmen 11, wing 75, tail 34, tarsus 17. Collected in Queensland. 
Eggs. Three eggs usually form the clutch. A clutch of three eggs taken at Duaringa, near 
Rockhampton, Queensland, on the 15th oE October, 1898, is of a pale greyish-white 
ground-colour, well spotted and blotched, particularly at the larger end of each 
egg, with sepia and slate markings. Roundish in form, and slightly pointed towards 
one end; surface of shell fine, and slightly glossy. 16 mm. by 12. 
Nest. Very similar to that of N. chrysoptera and placed in the same kind of situations. 
Breeding-months. September to December. 
Five or six species of Treerunners are admitted in the Australian Avifauna 
and four of these were described and named by Gould, but he knew nothing 
of its habits. 
The present species is still one of the rarest of these birds with a very 
restricted range, and little more is known than when Gould wrote, although 
so many years have intervened. 
J. Ramsay, writing on the Birds in Upper Clarence River District in the 
Emu, stated : “ At camp 2 a flock of Neosittas was observed, several individuals 
of which clearly displayed the white head so characteristic of this species. 
Unfortunately, the only one secured was a female, but there is little doubt 
it is a true leucocephala, and that the habitat of the species may be extended 
into northern New South Wales.” Editorial comment reads : “ In his 
‘ Nests and Eggs ’ Mr. A. J. North does not show New South Wales as a habitat 
of this species; but Dr. E. P. Ramsay does, in his ‘ Tabular List ’ (1888). 
It is indeed a happy coincidence that Mr. John Ramsay confirms his father’s 
useful ‘List.’ The specimen that Mr. Ramsay collected, now added to H. 
L. White’s Collection, National Museum, Melbourne, is well represented by 
the central figure of Gould’s excellent plate of this species in Birds of Australia, 
Yol. IV.” 
There seems little else on record. 
I described Neositta leucoptera lumholtzi, writing: “ Differs from N. 1. 
leucoptera (Gould) in having the brown bar on the inner webs of the primaries 
much darker. Queensland.” 
This was an unfortunate lapse for “ leucocephala ,” as leucoptera was so 
called on account of the bar above mentioned being white. The specimen 
was collected by Lumholtz with no more precise locality than Queensland. 
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