structure of the organ is doubtless indicative of a corresponding
peculiarity in the nature of the food upon which the bird subsists. I
may mention that Sir J. P. Millbank, Bart., informed me that a living
example of this species in his possession evinced a strong partiality to
the leaves of the common lettuce and other soft vegetables, and that it
was also very fond of the juice of fruits, of cream and butter.
Mrs. Anderson told me that it lays four eggs in the hollow part of a
tree, but beyond this I was unable to ascertain anything respecting its
nidification.
Its voice is a hoarse, quacking, inharmonious noise, sometimes
resembling the barking of a dog.
It would appear from the numerous specimens I have examined that the
sexes scarcely differ from each other in colour; the young, on the
contrary, have but little of the rich yellow and red markings of the
breast, that part being olive-brown like the back.
The general colour of the upper surface brown; head and back of the neck
tinged with grey, the feathers of these parts as well as of the back
margined with a deeper tint; rump, belly, and under tail-coverts deep
red; cheeks, throat, and chest yellow, the former tinged with red;
shoulders on their inner surface yellow tinged with rufous olive;
tail-feathers banded at the base with orange-yellow and brown; the inner
webs of the quill-feathers at the base and beneath, with dusky red and
brown; irides very dark brown; bill brown; nostrils, bare skin round the
eye, and feet dark olive-brown.
Our Plate represents an old and a nearly adult bird, exhibiting traces
of the immature plumage on the chest, of the natural size.
[Illustration:
CALYPTORHYNCHUS BANKSII.
_J. Gould and H.C. Richter del et lith._ _Hullmandel & Walton Imp._
]
CALYPTORHYNCHUS BANKSII.
Banksian Cockatoo.
_Psittacus Banksii_, Lath. Ind. Orn., vol. i. p. 107.—Ib. Gen. Syn.,
p. 63, p. 109.—Parkinson’s Voy., p. 144.—Cook’s Voy., vol. ii. p.
18.—Shaw, Gen. Zool., vol. viii. p. 476.—Lath. Gen. Hist., vol. ii.
p. 199. pl. 27 (female).
_Psittacus magnificus_, Shaw, Nat Misc., pl. 50.
_Calyptorhynchus Banksii_, Vig. and Horsf. in Linn. Trans., vol. xv.
p. 271.
—— _stellatus_, Wagl. Mon. Psitt. in Abhand., tom. i. p. 683. pl. 27
(a very young bird).—Selby in Nat. Lib. Orn., vol. vi. Parrots, p.
134.
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