TEE OOLOGY OF INDIAN PARASITIC CUCKOOS. 681 



little smaller ; the ground colour is paler and browner, and the markings 

 are faint lilac and dull brown. 



" Now, on the other hand, the only birds I have ever seen feeding- 

 young sonnerati were Iora typhia (The Common Iora)." 



One of the above eggs was very kindly given me by Mr. Davidson, 

 and is said by him to closely resemble the oviduct egg. This I have 

 shewn in Plate III, fig. 5. 



The ground colour is a cream, with the faintest tinge of brown, but I 

 think the brown impression is given by the markings rather than the 

 ground colour. These, the markings, consist of numerous small blotches 

 and specks of a rusty red-brown, with others of the same character 

 underlying them of a pale lilac-grey. Both markings are rather numer- 

 ous everywhere, but, perhaps, more so towards the larger end. The 

 texture of this cuckoo's egg is like that of Cuculus canorus, but finer 

 and more fragile, with the surface more glossed. In shape it is also like 

 the eggs of the Common Cuckoo, being a broad, blunt oval, but little 

 compressed towards the smaller end. It measures *76" by '63", 

 and is, I , gather 'from -what Mr. Davidson says, the smallest of his 

 eggs. 



Mr. T. R. Bell has been kind enough to furnish me with some notes 

 of this little cuckoo : " I have an egg, I am sure, of Penthoceryx, but 

 not having seen it laid, so to speak, am not in a position to say that it i* 

 so without any doubt. Half a dozen times at least I have seen loras 

 (typhia of course) in the act of feeding a noisy, fledged, young Pentho- 

 ceryx twice, and in consecutive seasons, just outside my bungalow : 

 the other times in the jungles. In an Iora's nest we got one egg that I 

 am nearly certain must belong to a Banded Bay Cuckoo, as it is far 

 larger than an Iora's, is of a different shape (more equal at both ends), 

 and is not at all blotched, though rather finely spotted round the larger 

 end, with similar coloured spots to those of the Iora egg : a sort 

 of grey-purple. I have no Iora eggs without some blotches, at least, 

 besides spots ; and from what I have seen of young Penthoceryx the 

 fact of their being fed by loras and no other birds seems to make fairly 

 certain that my eggs must belong to the latter genus." 



Penthoceryx sonnerati has two distinct cries — one exactly like that 

 of Cuculus micropterus, except in a much higher key • the other like that 

 ofpasserinus, with this difference that it (sonnerati) atways stops in 

 the middle of the second or third repetition. 



