THE OOLOGY OF INDIAN PARASITIC CUCKOOS. 81 



Col. Rattray lias given me most important notes on this bird, and I 

 quote these in full : — 



•'•'On 10th June 1903 I saw a bird (Cuculus saturatus) harrying a 

 pair of Acanthopneuste occipitalis (the Large Crowned Willow- Warbler) 

 near where I knew they had a nest, so I shot it. It was a female and 

 contained a broken egg ready for expulsion. 



" On 15th June 1903 I shot a second female in a similar condition. 



" On 17th June 1903 I again shot a third female containing an egg 

 ready for laying. All these eggs were broken by the shots or fall, but 

 they were exactly similar to those found on the 17th of May and 9th 

 and 11th June, all in nests of Acanthopneuste occipitalis. 



•'*' They are pure white, rather long eggs with a fine shell with a lot of 

 tiny black and brown specks." 



Col. C. L. Wilson wrote me : — " On the 9th June 1889 I found in an 

 old tree stump above Sonamurg a grass nest containing four eggs, three 

 of which proved to be of Phylloscopus humii (Hume's Willow- Warbler). 

 The fourth egg was a long oval, somewhat blunt at both ends, pure 

 white, a faint ring of brownish specks at the larger end and a few 

 scattered elsewhere. There was barely room in the diminutive nest for 

 this egg, which measures '85" by "6", the other three eggs being of the 

 normal Warbler's size. 



'•' I was much puzzled to account for it until, after a long wait, I 

 noticed a cuckoo which kept hovering round. 



•' It would have been impossible, from the nature of the nest, for the 

 egg to have been laid in it : it must have been placed there after laying. 



" I took a similar egg, measuring *82' / by *58", in a nest of Acanthop- 

 neuste occipitalis (on the 16th June 1898) in a hole atthe roots of a pine. 



" At Murree I took a third on the 17th July 1899 in a nestofthe 

 same species of Warbler in a similar position. " 



This third egg, which I have seen, measures *83" by *53". 



Finally, Mr. B. B. Osmaston, writing from Darjeeling, notes : — " They 

 were both laid in the nests of Niltava sundara (the Rufus-bellied Niltava 

 in one case along with three eggs of the latter and in the other alone, 

 the eggs of tin Niltava having evidently been ejected (the shells were 

 lying in the ground below the nest). The eggs are similar in shape to 

 the cuckoos' eggs described by you, i.e., almost elliptical in section. 

 Tiny are pure white, with a few small reddish or brownish specks near 

 th } big end. I found tham at 6,000 ft. elevation, and the only cuckoos 



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