394 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol. loe 



A much later, and Kttle known, paper by Keulemans (1907, pp. 

 245-247) gives further welcome details. He writes that the female 

 emerald cuckoo lays her eggs in the nests of smaller bkds that build 

 open, cuplike nests, and mentions Zosterops jicedulinus and Speriops 

 leucophaea as the usual foster parents. Of the latter species of host 

 he relates a remarkable observation he made in July 1863 on his planta- 

 tion on Principe Island, "Behind my small dwelling house grew a 

 large Acacia tree, the branches of which nearly touched the balcony. 

 A pair of Parinias {=Speirops) had built their nest so near the 

 verandah that I could hear the 3'oung ones while they were being 

 fed. One morning the pleasant sound of this young family calling for 

 food had suddenly ceased. A week later I noticed a young Cuckoo 

 lifting its head above the nest. Stranger still, two or three days later 

 a second j'oung cuckoo was to be seen in the same nest, and both these 

 intruders were fed, not onl}^ by their original foster parents but also 

 by at least a dozen other small birds." The nest and its contents 

 came to grief a few days later. 



These three hosts in Principe Island — Horizorhinus dohmi, Zos- 

 terops Jicedulinus, and Speirops leucophaea — are all additional to our 

 previous list. It is unfortunate that no details of actual instances are 

 available for either of the first two. While there is nothing improbable 

 in their being parasitized by the emerald cuckoo, Keulemans' unsup- 

 ported statement does not constitute evidence in itself, and it cannot 

 be claimed that bh'ds of the first two species are known definitely 

 as fosterers of the emerald cuckoo. 



It may be pointed out that the Speirops case described above gives 

 us the first evidence that more than one emerald cuckoo egg may be 

 laid in one nest. We have no way of knowing if the two eggs were 

 the product of a single bird or of two different individuals, 



Winterbottom (1951, p, 27) hsts the puff-backed shi-ike (Dryoscopus 

 cuhla) as a host of the emerald cuckoo but he gives no fm-ther data, 

 Mackworth-Praed and Grant (1952, p, 509) also list puff-backed 

 shrikes, together with bulbuls, as the usual hosts of this cuckoo. 

 However, I am aware of but a single specific instance of the puff-back 

 in this capacity (J. Vincent, 1934, p. 761; a record overlooked before). 

 The puff-back shrike is known better as a victim of the black cuckoo. 

 However, its ecological habitat is much less strictly sylvan than that 

 of the emerald cuckoo, being more like that of the black cuckoo. 



On the other hand, hosts additional to those previously hsted are 

 indicated in the following observations, Guichard (1950, p. 168) 

 found the Abyssinian bulbul (Pycnonotus harbatus schoanus) to be 

 victimized at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, while in Nyasaland Benson 

 (1953, p, 35) records eggs of the emerald cuckoo in nests of Chalomitra 

 senegalensis gutturalis and Cyanomitra olivacea alfredi. Benson also 



