ARTAMUS LEUCOPYGIALIS, Gowda. 
White-rumped Wood Swallow. 
Artamus leucopygialis, Gould in Proc. of Zool, Soe., February 8, 1842 
Oy a careful comparison of specimens of the White-rumped 4rtami from India and the Indian Archipelago 
with those killed in Australia, I cannot but consider that at least two, if not three, species haye been con- 
founded under one name, and that the Australian bird had remained undescribed until characterized by me 
at the Meeting of the Zoological Society above quoted. The present species is most nearly allied to the 
Artanus lencorhynchus, but is readily distinguished from it by the blue colour of the bill; and I may here 
remark, that all the Australian birds have the bill fine pale blue, and are also considerably smaller in all 
their admeasurements than those of the islands to the northwards. 
Van Diemen’s Land and Western Australia are the only colonies in which this bird has not been observed ; 
its range, therefore, over the continent may be considered as very general: in South Australia and New 
South Wales it would appear to be migratory, visiting those parts in summer for the purpose of breeding. 
Among other places where I observed it in considerable abundance was Mosquito, and the other small 
islands near the mouth of the Hunter, and on the borders of the rivers Mokai and Namoi, situated to the 
northward of Liverpool Plains ; in these last-mentioned localities it was breeding among the large flooded 
vum-trees bordering the rivers, 
The breeding-season commences in September and continues until January, durmg which period at least 
two broods are reared. In the Christmas week of 1839, at which time I was on the plains of the interior, in 
the direction of the Namoi, the young progeny of the second brood were perched in pairs or threes together, 
on a dead twig near their nest, as represented in the Plate. They were constantly visited and fed by the 
adults, who were hawking about for insects in great numbers, some performing their evolutions above the tops 
and among the branches of the trees, while others were sweeping over the open plain with great rapidity of 
flight, making in their progress through the air the most rapid and abrupt turns; at one moment rising toa 
considerable altitude and the next descending to within a few feet of the ground, as the insects of which they 
were in pursuit arrested their attention. In the brushes, on the contrary, the flight of this bird is more 
soaring and of a much shorter duration, particularly when hawking in the open glades, which frequently 
teem with insect life. When flying near the ground the white mark on the rump shows very conspicuously, 
and strikingly reminds one of the House Marten of our own country. 
Two nests, taken in November on a small island in Coral Bay, near the entrance of the harbour at Port 
Essington, were compactly formed of dried wiry grass and the fine plants growing on the beach; they 
were placed in a fork of a slender mangrove-tree within fifteen feet of the water, m which they were 
erowing; but like several other Australian birds, the Aréamus leucopygialis often avails itself of the deserted 
nests of other species instead of building one of its own. Most of those I found breeding on the Mokai 
had possessed themselves of the forsaken nest of the @rallina Melanoleuca, which they had rendered warm 
and of the proper size by slightly lining it with grasses, fibrous roots, and the narrow leaves of the Lucalypti. 
The eggs are generally three in number, are much lighter in colour, and more minutely spotted than those 
of any other species of the genus I have seen ; their ground-colour is flesh-white, finely freckled and spotted 
with faint markings of reddish brown and grey, in some stances forming a zone at the larger end: their 
medium length is ten lines, and breadth seven lines and a half. 
The sexes are only to be distinguished by dissection, and may be described thus: head, throat and back 
sooty grey; primaries and tail brownish black washed with grey ; chest, all the under surface and rump 
pure white; irides brown ; bill light bluish grey at the base, black at the tip; legs and feet mealy greenish 
orey, 
The Plate represents a male, a female, two young ones and a nest of the natural size. 
