THE CUCKOOS 1765 



the great spotted cuckoo (C. glandarius} has twice occurred in England, its home is 

 in Southwestern Europe and the Mediterranean countries, extending thence through 

 Syria and Asia Minor to Persia, while in winter the bird ranges into Africa, as far 

 as Cape Colony. It is of an ashy-brown color, white below, with a buff-colored 

 throat, and is easily distinguished by its crested gray head and long tail, which is 

 broadly tipped with white. The length of the bird is about sixteen inches. Its 

 note is described by Canon Tristram as kee-ow, kee-ou, and it has an alarm note re- 

 sembling the word cark, as well as a third note, like wurree, wurree. It is parasitic, 

 like the members of the genus Cuculus, but does not victimize small birds like the 

 true cuckoos, selecting the nests of crows and magpies, whose eggs bear a consider- 

 able resemblance to its own. The great spotted cuckoo often places two, or even 

 four, of its eggs in a nest, where the young cuckoos often live in peace with the off- 

 spring of the foster parents, and, so far as is known, not attempting to eject the 

 rightful owners. The Indian pied crested cuckoo (C. jacobinus} lays blue eggs, re- 

 sembling in color those of the babbling thrushes (Crateropus and Argya), in whose 

 nests it places them. Apparently the young cuckoo ejects the rightful owners, 

 when the young are hatched, as the babblers are often seen in attendance on their 

 parasitic dependants without any of their own young being of the party. Some- 

 times the cuckoo puts two of its eggs into a babbler's nest, and it is said to break 

 some of the foster parents' eggs to make room for its own. Colonel Butler says 

 that when they discover a nest of a babbler, which does not suit them to lay in, the 

 cuckoos invariably destroy the eggs already there by driving a hole into them with 

 their bills, and sucking the contents. 



The six species of hawk cuckoos are remarkable for their exact 

 Hawk Cuckoos 



resemblance in color and flight to a sparrow hawk, being gray birds 

 with a great deal of rufous below, large yellow eyes, and very broadly banded 

 tails. They lay white or greenish-blue eggs, and one species {Hierococcyx sparve- 

 roides) is said to build its own nest and sit on the eggs. This fact has been 

 recorded in the Nilgiri hills of Southern India, but in the Himalayas the bird is 

 stated to be parasitic on the babbling thrushes. 

 _ c u While the hawk cuckoos may be distinguished from the crested 



cuckoos by the absence of a crest, the true cuckoos differ from them 

 by the shape of the tail, in which the outer feathers are nearly of the same length 

 as the others, instead of decidedly shorter. Moreover, the tail feathers lack the 

 transverse dark bars of the hawk cuckoos. The genus is represented by ten species, 

 all very similar to one another, and hawk-like in coloration and appearance, the old 

 birds being gray while the young are more or less rufous, the Oriental Sonnerat's 

 cuckoo {Cuculus sonnerati) having, however, the plumage for the most part rufous 

 barred with black. Of the ten species, four are African, one Australian, and the 

 rest Indian. Their notes vary greatly, only one other species besides the European 

 having the "cuckoo" note from which the bird takes its name, this being the 

 South African cuckoo (C. gularis), which has a note similar to that of the common 

 species, but more slowly uttered, and the first syllable not in such a high key. The 

 red-chested cuckoo of Africa (C. solitarius} has a whistling note, on account of 

 which it is known to the colonists at the Cape by the name of Piet-mijn-vrouw, 



