CACATUA GYMNOPIS, Sclater.

Naked-eyed Cockatoo.

Cacatua sanguinea, Sturt, Travels in Austr. App. p. 36 (1849, nec Gould).

Cacatua gymnopis, Sclater, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1871, p. 490, 1875, p. 61.—Id. List of Animals in Zool. Gard.
p. 313 (1883).

 

In the ‘Birds of Australia’ will be found a figure of the Blood-stained Cockatoo (Cacatua sanguinea) of
Northern Australia, which was originally described in 1842 from specimens obtained at Port Essington.

The present bird resembles C. sanguinea in having the lores more or less stained with rosy red. But it is
at once distinguishable from that species by the broad plaque of blue naked skin below the eye, which is also
continued in a ring round the eye. In Cacatua sanguinea the naked skin round the eye is white ; besides,
that bird is considerably smaller in dimensions and has much shorter claws.

As in the case of the Blue-eyed Cockatoo, this species was first discriminated by Mr. Sclater, the Secretary
of the Zoological Society of London, from a specimen living in the Society’s collection in 1871. The bird
in question had been purchased from the well-known deale:, Mr. Jamrach, in 1868, and its locality was not
known. But Mr. Sclater ascertained that two White Cockatoos in the gallery of the British Museum,
obtained by Sturt at Depot Creek during his expedition into Southern Australia, belonged to the same
species. The correct patria of this Cockatoo is therefore no doubt Southern Australia.

Our figure of this bird is taken from a skin of an individual that was also formerly living in the
Zoological Society’s collection, having been purchased in February 1872, and having died in January 1883.

In the Appendix to the narrative of Captain Sturt’s expedition into Southern Australia is given the
following account of this species :-—

“This bird succeeded Cacatua galerita, and was first seen in an immense flock on the grassy plains at
the bottom of the Depot Creek, feeding on the grassy plains or under the trees, where it greedily sought
the seeds of the kidney bean. These Cockatoos were very wild, and when they rose from the cua or the
trees, made a most discordant noise, their note being, if anything, still more disagreeable than that of either
of the others. They left us in April, and must have migrated to the N.E., as they did not pass us to the
N.W., nor were they anywhere seen so numerously as at this place.”

[R. B. 8.J