386 BRITISH BIRDS. 
CUCULUS GLANDARIUS. 
GREAT SPOTTED CUCKOO. 
(PLaTE 68.) 
Cuculus andalusize, Briss. Orn. iv. p. 126 (1760). 
Cuculus glandarius, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 169 (1766) ; et auctorum plurimorum— 
Gmelin, Latham, (Gray), (Hartlaub), (Salvin), (Dresser), (Newton), &c. 
Cuculus pisanus, Gimel. Syst. Nat. i. p. 416 (1788). 
Cuculus melissophonus, Vieill. N. Dict. d’ Hist. Nat. viii. p. 230 (1817). 
Coceyzus pisanus (Gmel.) Audouin, Expl. Pl. Savig. Ors. d’ Egypte, p. 266 (1825). 
Coccysus glandarius (Linn.), Savi, Orn. Tose. i. p. 154 (1827). 
Cuculus macrourus, Brehm, Vog. Deutschl. p. 153 (1881). 
Cuculus gracilis, Brehm, Vog. Deutschl. p. 154 (1831). 
Coceystes glandarius (Linn.), Gloger, Handb. Vog. Eur. p. 449 (1834). 
Oxylophus glandarius (Zinn.), Bonap. Comp. List B. Eur. § N, Amer. p. 40 (1888). 
Cuculus phaiopterus, Riipp. fide Bonap. Consp. p. 102 (1850). 
The claim of the Great Spotted Cuckoo to be included in the British 
list is very slender, and rests on two examples only. The first of these 
was said to have been caught in Ireland on the island of Omagh, co. Gal- 
way, in the month of March 1842. The bird was being chased by Hawks, 
and took refuge in a hole in a stone fence, where it was taken alive 
and kept in confinement for several days. This specimen came into the 
possession of Mr. Creighton, of Clifden, and was ultimately secured for the 
Trinity College Museum at Dublin, but is now lost (Ball, Ann. Nat. Hist. 
1843, xii. p. 149). A second specimen was shot near Bellingham, in 
Northumberland, on the 5th of August, 1870, and is now in the Newcastle 
Museum (Hancock, ‘ Birds of North. and Durh.’ p. 27). 
The Great Spotted Cuckoo is a summer visitor to the Spanish Peninsula, 
Palestine, Asia Minor, and Persia, occasionally visiting South Russia, 
Italy, and Greece. It is a partial resident throughout North Africa, and 
winters throughout South Africa ; it is also an accidental visitor to South 
France and Germany, and occasionally strays to the Canaries. 
The Great Spotted Cuckoo is a well-known summer migrant to several 
parts of South Europe, where it arrives rather earlier than the Common 
Cuckoo. Irby says that at Gibraltar it generally appears between the 7th 
and the 28th of March ; in Palestine Canon Tristram observed it as early 
as the 4th of March; but in Asia Minor it does not arrive before the end 
of that month. It retires southwards rather early in the autumn, the 
latest recorded by Irby at Gibraltar being on the 7th of August. During 
his last journey to Palestine, Tristram met with a flock of this bird which 
had not yet dispersed on the 22nd of April. Unlike the Common Cuckoo, 
