Ornithological and Other Oddities 



in the Nilgiris it appears to build its own nest, 

 a simple structure of sticks ; so that here, ap- 

 parently, we have a species in the very act of 

 locally degenerating into parasitism, while it 

 remains a respectable bird in other parts of its 

 range. Its eggs are white with a few spots. 



The unfortunate babbler tribe are utilised in 

 the plains of India by another cuckoo as well 

 as the brain-fever bird, and this case tends still 

 further to complicate the mimicry question, for, 

 though the eggs are, as in the former case, plain 

 blue, like those of the dupes, the cuckoo itself 

 has no resemblance to a hawk — at any rate, not 

 to any Indian hawk. Indeed, there seems not 

 to be any hawk which, like this cuckoo, is black 

 above and white below, with a pointed crest, 

 and about as big as a missel-thrush, so that there 

 is no mimicry here. The curious thing is that 

 the crows do not like this cuckoo, and hunt it 

 about as they do the koel, though it does them 

 no harm. They probably object to cuckoos on 

 principle, as they do to owls. This is a noisy 

 bird, but I cannot remember anything about its 

 note. I once brought up two young ones, which 

 were less distinctly coloured than the adults ; 

 they were very quiet, and decidedly stupid, 

 taking a long while to learn to feed, like most 

 young cuckoos. This species is the Coccystes 

 jacobinus. 



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