KHASIA HILLS CUCKOO 105 



and March, some of which ahnost certainly refer to this form. At 

 present, from the evidence at my disposal, I can neither substan- 

 tiate nor refute this suggestion, as it is quite impossible to recognize 

 one subspecies from another in the field unless a particularly bright 

 light shows up the comparative slaty darkness of this bird, to an 

 observer with some experience of cuckoos. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Exact details as to the distribution of the Khasia Hills cuckoo are 

 still wantiug as so many records of cuckoos refer merely to the 

 species, Cuculus canoms, while the subspecies is not given or, indeed, 

 in many cases distinguished. The breeding area has been proved to 

 extend throughout the hills of Assam and Burma as far south as 

 Karen-nee and as far east as Yunnan, while Bangs and Peters (1928) 

 consider it is this form that is found and breeds m eastern Tibet and 

 Szechwan. To the west the breeding cuckoo in the Bhutan Hills is 

 undoubtedly of this race, but hotv much farther west it may extend 

 is not known though, almost certainly, it may be found breeding in 

 the lower Himalayas below Sikkim. Stevens informs me that he 

 believes it does. 



A fine series of breeding specimens in the Stevens collection, col- 

 lected by him in the Sikkim Hills, indicates that the range of bakeri 

 is below 7,000 or 8,000 feet, and that above that, up to 12,000 feet, 

 telepJiOims is the breeding form. 



In the cold weather it extends to the countries mentioned above 

 in this article as being visited on migration. To these may be 

 added that it occurs in Siam, as far south as Bangkok and the Siamese 

 peninsula west of Tenasserim. Finally, extraordinary as it may seem, 

 it has been recorded by Friedmann (Friedmann and Riley, 1931) as 

 having once been obtained in St. Lawrence Island, Bering Sea, an oc- 

 currence that entitles it to a place in the American avifauna. This 

 specimen was originally described as belonging to the central and 

 northeastern Asiatic race tel-ephonus, which one might expect would 

 occur at long intervals in Alaska. 



178223 — 40- 



