AFRICAN PARASITIC CUCKOOS — FRIEDMANN 403 



nest contained three eggs, of which one was smashed and the others 

 seemed to be Euplectes eggs. It must be cautioned that there is no 

 proof of parasitism in this case; the cuckoo may have come to lay 

 there or to eat one of the eggs in the nest. 



The lire-crowned bishop bu*d (Euplectes hordeacea sylvatica) does 

 not appear to have been recorded as a victim of the didric cuckoo 

 until Benson (1953, p. 35) listed it as a host of this parasite in Nyasa- 

 land, but ^\^thout further details. In the Upemba Park, Belgian 

 Congo, Verheyen (1953, p. 315) saw a hen didric entering a colony of 

 the nominate race of this bishop bhd but he did not obtain evidence 

 of any actual parasitism. 



The white-winged whydah {ColUispasser albonotatus albonotatus) is 

 suspected of being a host of the didric in Southern Rhodesia by 

 Edwards, according to Miles (1951, p. 4), but no definite evidence 

 seems to be known. 



The golden-breasted bunting {Emheriza jiaviventris) has been 

 definitel}" added to the known victims of this cuckoo by Haj^dock 

 (1950, p. 150; 1951, p. 3) in Northern Rhodesia. He observed 

 nesthng didrics, one in each of tlu'ee nests of this bunting, as well as 

 three young didrics already out of the nest apparently attended hy 

 the buntings. 



When discussing the Cape rock bunting {Fringillaria capensis) as a 

 host of the didric, I mentioned (Friedmann, 1949a, p. 177) that 

 although several ^vriters had listed it as such, no localities or other 

 particulars were available. It seems that these authors were copying 

 from one another, and that the original source of them all was Mrs. 

 Barber, who apparently made her observations in the Transvaal. 

 Sharpe's edition of Layard's "Birds of South Africa" (1875, p. 155) 

 appears to contain the first mention of ^Irs. Barber's data. 



Egg Laying 



In my earlier report I stated that there is good evidence to the effect 

 that the didric hen often, if not regularly, may remove an egg from 

 the nest when lading its own into it. Skead (1952, p. 9) came to a 

 similar conclusion as vrell, but Reed (1953, pp. 138-140) concluded 

 that the opposite seemed to be the case. Reed studied the didric's 

 parasitism on the red bishop bird, and found that the cuckoo "does 

 not appear to remove an egg of the . . . host . . . the normal Red 

 Bishop clutch is three eggs and nearh^ all nests containing cuckoo eggs 

 carried a total of four eggs." While he gives data on some 23 instances 

 in which the red bishop bird was parasitized by the didric, most of 

 these cases were of nests mth j^oung cuckoos; in only six nests does 

 he record four eggs each (thi'ee bishop bu-d eggs and one didric egg). 



