DACELO LEACHII, Vig. and Horsf.
Leach’s Kingsfisher.
Dacelo Leachii, Lath. MSS. Vig. and Horsf. in Linn. Trans., vol. xv. p. 205.
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.
The specimen in the Linnean Society’s museum was presented by Dr. Brown, who procured it in Keppel Bay on the east coast; and it was subsequently seen at Shoalwater Bay 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.