AFRICAN PARASITIC CUCKOOS — FRIEDMANN 381 



Actually, this is not surprising when we consider that in the related 

 great-spotted cuckoo, the rightful 3"ouug often, and perhaps even 

 regularly, grow up together with the parasite. Furthermore, two 

 j^oung jacobin cuckoos have been noted as growing up together with 

 one of the young of a babbler host (Argya rnalcomli) in India, a further 

 indication of the lack of evicting behavior (Bates, 1938, p. 125). 



Egg Laying 



Pike (again cited in Godfrey, 1939) found, on December 4, another 

 nest of the fiscal slmke containing one egg of the jacobin cuckoo; two 

 days later it contained two shrike's eggs in addition to the cuckoo's, 

 and three days later still it held five eggs of the slniko and the one 

 egg of the jacobin. Pike was unable to visit the nest again. It would 

 appear from this case and the one referred to previously that the 

 cuckoo may ia}'^ occasionally into nests before the builder has begun 

 to lay. It is, of course, not impossible that in each instance there 

 may have been a single shrike's egg present and that the cuckoo 

 removed it Vv^hen laying its own. It is, however, not very likely that 

 this was the case, as the usual number of eggs m a clutch of the shrilve 

 is four or five, and in these cases there was no reduction as would 

 have been the case had the cuckoo removed an egg. In my earlier 

 account of this parasite (Friedmann, 1949a, p. 30) I summarized the 

 then available information on this point, and I have seen no evidence 

 to cause me to change it since: "No one has witnessed the actual 

 deposition of the egg, but judging by the fact that the number of 

 eggs of the host is usually less than the fuU complement by the number 

 of cuckoos' eggs in the nest, it seems that the cuckoo usually removes 

 an egg before laying into the nest . . . ." Of course, if — as seems to 

 have been the case in the two instances described above — the cuckoo's 

 egg is laid first there can be no such removal of a host's egg. 



An observation suggesting that the jacobin cuckoo may at times 

 be an egg-eating nest robber is the following sent me by Pike, who 

 once saw some red bishop birds (Euplectes orix) chasing one of these 

 cuckoos away from their nests. Two of the nests each had a hole of 

 about an inch and a half m diameter torn in the lower part; one of 

 the nests contained two eggs of the builder, one being badly pecked 

 and empty and the other also broken; the bottom of the nest was 

 moist with spilled yolk. 



In my earlier account of this cuckoo (Friedmann, 1949a, p. 30) it 

 M^as mentioned that only a single instance was known in Africa of 

 more than two eggs of this bird in one nest, although in India Stuart 

 Baker had recorded six nests with three eggs of the parasite apiece, 

 two nests with four, and one nest with six eggs attributable to the 

 jacobin cuckoo. The lone African instance was a nest of the sombre 



