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| date | title | tags | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-01-07 | Leach's Kingfisher |
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Specimens of this fine Kingsfisher are contained in the British Museum, the Linnean Society, and my own collections, all of which were procured on the north-east coast of Australia, where it evidently replaces the Dacelo gigantea of New South Wales and South Australia.
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The specimen in the Linnean Society’s museum was presented by Dr. Brown1, who procured it in Keppel Bay on the east coast; and it was subsequently seen at Shoalwater Bay2 and Broad Sound on the same coast; my own specimens were obtained at Cape York, the north-eastern extremity of Australia.
The habits, actions, food, and indeed the whole of the economy, are so precisely like those of the Dacelo gigantea that a separate description of them is entirely unnecessary.
The male has the head and back of the neck striated with brown and white; sides of the neck and under surface white, crossed with very narrow irregular markings of brown, these markings becoming much broader and conspicuous on the under surface of the shoulder; back brownish black; wing-coverts and rump shining azure-blue; wings deep blue; primaries white at the base, black on their inner webs and blue on the outer; tail rich deep blue, all but the two centre feathers irregularly barred near the extremity and largely tipped with white; upper mandible brownish black, under mandible pale buff; irides dark brown; feet olive.
The female differs but little from the male in the colouring of the plumage, except that the tail-feathers, instead of being of a rich blue barred and tipped with white, are of a light chestnut-brown conspicuously barred with bluish black.
The Plate represents the two sexes about the natural size.