86 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Courtship. — There is nothing recorded upon this subject but, so 

 far as I know, it differs in no way from that of the Khasia Hills 

 cuckoo, and both sexes seem to be equally promiscuous in their sexual 

 relations. 



Nesting. — This cuckoo is parasitic principally on the small warblers 

 of the PhyllosGopus and Acanthopneuste group, which lay white eggs, 

 either immaculate or speckled slightly with various tints of reddish 

 brown or red, or the Seicercus group, which lay glossy pure white 

 eggs. 



In my own collection I have eggs taken from the nests of 16 species 

 and subspecies of fosterers (see the following list) ; of these the first 

 10 may be considered to be normal fosterers and the latter abnormal. 



The Himalayan cuckoo does adopt a certain territory but hardly 

 in the restricted sense that Cuculus canoi^s and its various races do. 

 The principal reason for this is the comparative rarity of the birds 

 that she selects as foster parents to her eggs. For instance, although 

 the little Acanthopneuste breeding in the Khasia Hills is a common 

 bird, it nowhere breeds in the numbers in which birds of the Suya and 

 Cisticola genera are found. Perhaps half a dozen pairs may be found 

 in one big forest of many square miles, and to find even these six is 

 very hard work. In the same forest another half dozen birds of the 

 genus Seicermis of various species may be found. These little war- 

 blers of the two genera Acanthopneuste and Seicercus make very 

 similar nests, balls of moss, quite green and fresh, which are placed 

 in hollows in banks and generally among the same kind of moss as 

 that of which the nests are built. They are exceedingly hard to find 

 by human beings and, unless the birds are watched on to the nest, 

 are generally located only when the female is disturbed from it by 

 accident and doubtless the cuckoo also finds they are difficult to mark 

 down. 



List of Foster Paeents 



PhyUoscopus inornatus humei 2 eggs 



Phylloscopus prorcgulus simlaae 1 " 



Acanthopneuste reguloides harterti 13 " 



Acanthopneuste reguloides davisoni 3 " 



Acanthopneuste reguloides reguloides 1 " 



Acanthopneuste occipitatis occipitatis 4 " 



Seicercus cantator 3 " 



Seicercus burkii 2 " 



Seicercus xanthoschista xanthoschista 1 " 



Seicercus castaneiceps castaneiceps 2 " 



lanthia rufilata 1 " 



Niltava sundara sundara 1 " 



Suya crinigera assamica 1 " 



Orthotomus atrogularis nitidus 1 " 



Napothera brevicaudata striata 1 " 



Emberiza cia stracheyi 1 " 



