CUCULIDJE. 



Coccystes jacobinus (Bodd.). The Crested Pied Cuckoo. 



Coccystes melanoleucos (Gm.), Jerd. B. 2nd. i, p. 339. 



Coccystes jacobinus (Bodd.), Hume, Rouyh Draft N. $ E. no. 212. 



Our Indian Crested Pied Cuckoo lays, in the plaius of India and 

 tbe lower ranges of the Himalayas, during the latter half of June, 

 July, and August. .From Find Dadun Khan to Tipperah, and 

 from Dehra Doon to Salein, the season seeuis to be the same, but 

 in the Nilghiris the various Babblers, in whose nests this species 

 deposits its eggs, breed in January, February, and March, and 

 there this Cuckoo also seems to lay in those months. Mr. K. 

 Thompson writes : " In Dehra Doon this species is very common, 

 and lays in July and August in the nests of the Crateropi, whom 

 I have constantly watched later in the year feeding the young of 

 this species. I have seen it in Gurhwal during the breeding- 

 season, but it is not common there." 



Mr. W. Theobald makes the following note of this bird's 

 breeding in the neighbourhood of Find Dadim Khan and Katas in 

 the Salt Eange : " Lay in August ; eggs, one only ; shape, blunt 

 oval ; size, O91 inch by 0*81 inch ; colour, deep greenish blue. 

 This evidently parasitical egg was taken from the nest of Mala- 

 cocercus caudatus containing four ordinary eggs, which it closely 

 resembles in colour, though its form indicates its parasitical 

 character." 



Mr. A. G. E. Theobald, writing from Aptoor, Salem District, 

 says he took an egg out of the oviduct of a female on the 18th 

 August. 



The only species in whose nests I have myself known the eggs 

 of this Cuckoo ever to occur, are Argya malcolmi, G rateropus 

 canorus, Argya caudata, and Argya earlii, and by far the most 

 frequently in those of the former. 



From Kotagherry Miss Cockburn remarks : " On the Nilghiris 

 it appears to be exclusively in the nests of the large Grey Babbler 

 (A. malcolmi) and of our Common Laughing-Thrush (T. cochin- 

 nans) that the Fied Crested Cuckoo deposits its two greenish-blue 



As a rule, the young Cuckoo is the only bird that the foster- 

 parents rear ; numbers of times I have seen a pair of A. malcolmi in 

 careful attendance on a ravenous and clamorous young Cuckoo, 

 but never with any young of their own in company with it. And 

 yet one always finds three or four of the Babbler's eggs along with 

 the Cuckoo's, showing that it is not the parent Cuckoo in this 

 case that gets rid of the eggs to make room for her own. It is 

 probably the young Cuckoo that ousts his nest-fellows. 



Mr. R. M. Adam says : " On the 13th August I observed in a 

 garden in Agra two young birds of this species which had 

 apparently just left the nest being fed by an Argya malcolmi. 

 There was also a young A. malcolmi with the party." 



Major C. T. Bingham writes : " I have several eggs which I 



