100 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 2 65 



ceremony, raising first the head and then the tail and going through 

 somewhat stiff, jerky, bowing motions. Moreau (1944, pp. 98-100) 

 noted that the male sometimes bowed once or twice after his food 

 offering had been accepted by the bird he was feeding. Moreau 

 observed that this was quite similar to the actions of a male caprius 

 watched by Jackson as it fed a female in the presence of a fledged 

 young bird, and concluded that, if his own observations involved 

 the feeding, not of adult females, but of fledglings, as he thought 

 they did, then it would appear that the males use the same pres- 

 entation ceremony with fledged young as mth adult hens. 



Some idea of the repetitive extent of individual feedings, suggestive 

 of the fact that the catering adult was not merely indulging in court- 

 ship feeding, may be gathered from the following cases: Maclaren 

 (1952, pp. 684-685; 1953, p. 167) recorded one feeding "bout" that 

 involved 6 caterpillars in 2 minutes 35 seconds; Moreau (1944) 

 recorded one male didric bringing 21 caterpillars in 15 minutes to 

 one presumed fledgling and also cited a case by Elliott of C. Haas 

 "assiduously" feeding a fledgling of that species. 



If, as outlined in our hypothecated phylogeny within the genus 

 Chrysococcyx, the New Zealand-Australian species, lucidus, is more 

 "primitive" than the African species, klaas and caprius, discussed 

 above, or if it merely represents another, distinct portion of the 

 genus, it is of interest to know that it too has been observed to feed 

 fledglings of its own kind. In other words, this atavistic behavior 

 appears, from present meager data, not to be restricted to just one 

 portion of the genus. 



Bau-d (1945) and Moreau & Moreau (1939, pp. 298-299) suggested 

 that the relationship involving attentive behavior of an adult to a 

 young of the same species of glossy cuckoo may become established 

 when the young bird is "hardly out of the nest . . . ." K. D. Smith 

 (1957, p. 309) also reported that in Eritrea in October he saw adult 

 didric cuckoos (not identified as to sex) on several occasions feeding 

 young "just able to fly." Actually, in C. lucidus Howe (1905, pp. 35- 

 36)'^ reported seeing the adult cuckoo come to a nest of Acanthiza 

 chrysorrhoa containing a nestling lucidus and feed it; "meanwhile the 

 foster-parents were in a great state of excitement and repeatedly 

 dashed at her until she left the vicinity." The sex of the cuckoo was, of 

 course, merely assumed to be female. This observation has the merit of 

 eliminating any possibihty that the adult cuckoo may have mistaken 

 a nesthng for an adult, and it strengthens the conclusion that these 

 cuckoos do feed young of their own kind. In this connection one may 



'3 Howe's paper contains a mixture of observations on Chrysococcyx lucidus and 

 Cuculus pallidus, but this note appears to refer to C. lucidus, although it was 

 interpreted by Moreau (1949) as Cuculus pallidus. 



