BIRDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 259 



that the male and female he collected near Gardula on April 26 

 were a mated pair, a bit of indirect evidence, which, taken together 

 with the data presented by Erlanger, indicates the breeding season 

 to be more or less the same throughout most of the range of the 

 species. 



Family CUCULIDAE 



CUCULUS CANORUS Linnaeus subspecies 



Cuculus canorus Linnaeus, Syst. Nat., ed. 10, vol. 1, p. 110, 1758 : Europe. 



Specimens collected^: 



Female, immature, Gato River near Gardula, Ethiopia, April 17, 

 1912. 



This bird is in immature plumage and is therefore impossible to 

 identify beyond the species. Three races are known to occur in 

 southern Ethiopia, and it may be any one of them. These three are 

 a resident form, gularis^ and two migrants from the north, canorus 

 and teleph&nus. Inasmuch as the immature plumage is known to be 

 very variable, there is little to be gained by attempting a guess be- 

 tween the three. Still, the following points may be worth noting : 



Roberts ^* describes an immature Cuculus from Maputa River, 

 southern Mozambique, probably referable to gulains^ as having the 

 bill almost entirely yellow, with only the tip brown. The present 

 specimen has the whole bill brown, and is therefore probably not 

 gulaHs. However, it differs from a series of immature canorus and 

 telephonus in having no trace of rufous in the plumage, agreeing in 

 this respect with Roberts' bird {gularisf). Its measurements are 

 as follows: Wing, 194; tail, 158; culmen, 18 millimeters. 



Meinertzhagen -^ has discussed the migrations in Africa of canorus 

 and telephonus and finds that all Egyptian migrants are canorus, 

 while all Palestine birds (5) and three out of four birds collected in 

 Kenya Colony are telephonus. It seems as though telephonus enters 

 Africa in the region south of the Red Sea (about Cape Gardafui). 

 It is definitely known from northern Somaliland, southern Anglo- 

 Egyptian Sudan (Fashoda, subspecies identified by Hartert, not 

 definitely accepted by Sclater and Praed),^^ Ethiopia, Kenya Colony, 

 Uganda, eastern Belgian Congo, and the Zambesi Valley. It is 

 much rarer in the African continent than is typical canorus, and, on 

 the law of probability, the specimen collected by Mearns should be 

 of the European race. 



The migration dates in Ethiopia and Kenya Colony are not well 

 worked out but European canoi^s have been found in northern 



2* Ann. Transvaal Mus., vol. 10, 1924, pp. 80-81. 

 «Ibis, 1922, p. 52. 

 =«Idem, 1920, p. 643. 



94312^30 18 



