AFRICAN PARASITIC CUCKOOS — FRIEDMANN 395 



lists (p. 113) a nest of the paradise llycatclicr (Terpsiphone viridis) 

 with two eggs of its own and one egg of the emerald cuckoo found at 

 Blantyre, Nyasaland, on November 26. This flycatcher was previ- 

 ously known as a host from a single instance in the Belgian Congo. 

 The subspecies in Nyasaland is T. v. granti, while the Congo bird is 

 T. V. viridis. The crimson-crested black forest weaver (Malimbus 

 ■malimbicus crassirostris) is added to the list of the known victims on 

 the following basis. The van Somerens (1949, p. 95) record an egg 

 (identified as an emerald cuckoo's by Pitman) from a nest of this forest 

 weaver in the Bwamba area, Toro, western Uganda, An egg of the 

 weaver, punctured and empty, lay on the ground below the nest. 



One other bird not definitely known to be parasitized hj the emerald 

 cuckoo has been reported in a way suggestive of such a relationship. 

 Holliday and Tait (1953, p. IIG) watched a nesting pair of olive 

 barbets {Buccanodon olivaceum woodwardi) at Ngoye Forest, Zulidand. 

 Once, when the barbets had gone foraging for food for then- nesthngs, 

 an emerald cuckoo "approached the nest, made certain that the adult 

 barbets were nowhere in the vicinity, and disappeared from view into 

 the nest hole. All the time this was going on the young birds kept 

 up their continuous clamour. Whilst the intruder was still within 

 the nest, one of the parents arrived on the scene, and finding the un- 

 wanted visitor, attacked it fiercely and drove it away from the nest 

 site. Owing to the fact that the nest was inaccessible, an examination 

 of the nesthngs was not possible, but one might assume that one of 

 the chicks was probably a young cuckoo, and the parent was taking 

 an active interest in its welfare, for it is not likely that it would be 

 looking for a suitable nest in which to lay its eggs at this stage. As 

 little is known about the breeding habits of Emerald Cuckoos, it is 

 felt that this record is of some value, for some observers have seen it 

 frequenting the nests of other species of barbets during the breeding 

 season." The assumption that the adult cuckoo came to the nest 

 because of a presumed interest in the welfare of an equally hypothetical 

 nestling of its own kind has little enough to support it, but the fact 

 that the cuckoo showed some interest in the nest suggests that such a 

 site might be within the range of its potential choice of a receptacle 

 for its eggs. Hitherto no hole-nesting bird as been found to be para- 

 sitized by the emerald cuckoo, or, for that matter, by any of the 

 African metallic cuckoos of the genus Chalcites. 



CoTJRTsniP Behavior 



When I wi'ote my earlier account of this cuckoo nothing was known 

 of its com-tship behavior. Since then this gap has been partly fiUed 

 by the interesting and valuable observations recorded by Haydock 

 (1950, p. 150). He saw a female emerald cuckoo perched on a bare 



