Correspondence 221 



On the 30th Dec. 1917, about 3 o'clock in the afternoon I 

 found a nest of C. pardinii containing 3 eggs — it was not con- 

 venient to take them then, but next morning on visiting the nest I 

 found it to contain 5 eggs. I thought it odd that two eggs should 

 have been laid since the previous afternoon, but when I shot the 

 C. cafer on the 6th Feb., felt sure it was one of these cuckoos 

 had laid the extra egg. 



On the 1 9th April, 1918, I shot another C. cafer female, whose 

 oviduct contained 1 large fully developed egg, but with no shell, 

 and many small others, but doubt if it would have been laid 

 so late in the season as these birds usually have all left by the 

 middle of May, though she might have found a host even so 

 late as on the 19th June, 1915, I found a nest of C. jardmii with 

 3 eggs, very hard set. 



These cuckoos in pairs are common on " Copleston *' and very 

 noisy from Nov. to the end of April, and seem to live almost 

 entirely on large hairy caterpillars of Nudawielia belina (Arnold 

 Bulawayo) principally. 



Cocc})stes glandarius — on May 27th, 1918, I shot a female; it 

 was very shy, but persisted in returning to an acacia full of hairy 

 caterpillars (of a kind that live in huge companies and sleep in a 

 mass against the sheltered side of the trunk) on which it was feed- 

 ing. Each time I disturbed it it was chased some distance by a 

 fork-tailed Drongo — it uttered no cry and is the only one I ever 

 saw on the farm. 



C. serratus visits us in Nov., but does not stay the summer. 



C. Jacoinus and C. h^popinarius are both fairly common. 

 I shot a female of the latter as late as 27th May, 1917. 

 . Also have the nest and eggs of Prionops talacoma been de- 

 scribed ? 



On 9th April, 1918, I found a nest built on the horizontal 

 branch, about 10 ft. from the ground, of a Mangwe, a silvery- 

 leaved tree something like a Cape Silver tree— it was one of the 

 most beautiful nests I have even seen, cup-shaped, of grass entirely 

 overlaid on the outside with white cobwebs, exactly similar to its 

 surroundings and unless the parent bird had flown off, I could not 



