884 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVII. 



" I shot the Wren on its return and then thinking it just possible the 

 Cuckoo might return, left my man with the gun to watch, and within 

 ten minutes he shot a Cuculus poliocephalus alongside the nest. Of 

 course this is not proof, but it comes near it." 



" I should mention that since the 20th, when I found the first nest, I 

 had discovered that C. poliocephalus was about, and had shot one to 

 make certain, although its call is so unmistakeable." 



The egg sent me by Mr. Whymper is quite different in colour to 

 any others I have seen, — in fact it is, just as he says, almost exactly the 

 same in colour as a rather pale Horornis egg, perhaps a little redder 

 and less purple than most of the latter. It is a rather clumsy egg, 

 nearly elliptical in shape but very squat, with one end somewhat 

 larger than the other, but both equally obtuse. It is faintly mottled 

 with a darker shade of its own colour. In size it measures '8" X '61". 

 Cuculus micropterus.* 

 The Indian Cuckoo. 



No oviduct egg has as yet been got of this bird, but all the evidence 

 obtainable confirms Colonel Rattray's identification of this bird's eggs. 

 I have had a few more sent me and have taken one myself this year. 

 About Shillong itself micropterus does not occur at all, and in the fine 

 series of canorus eggs obtained this season round the station there has 

 not been a single blue egg, but as soon as my collectors worked the 

 ravines where micropterus was common and canorus, if not altogether 

 absent, at least very rare, they obtained a blue Cuckoo's egg in a nest 

 of Niltava sundara together with three eggs of the fosterer. 

 fllEROCOCOTX SPARVEROIDES. 



The Large Hawk Cuckoo. 

 During the past season (1906) I have been fortunate in obtaining 

 no less than four blue eggs of this Cuckoo. The eggs were obtained, 



* Mr. J. D. D. LaTouche in the Ibis for January 1907 has the following remarks on an 

 egg of this bird taken from the oviduct :— »* A female which I shot on May 26th, 1901, had an 

 egg ready for laying in the oviduct; unfortunately it was smashed to bits by the shot. In 

 colour it was pinkish white, with round specks and spots of rich red and deep carmine about 

 the larger end, the rest of the shell having only a few isolated spots. The general appear- 

 ance, so fat as could be judged from the fragments, was somewhat like some eggs of 

 Buchanya lac.cogenys." 



This description does not correspond well with our supposed blue eggs of micropterus, but 

 does not necessarily mean that the blue eggs are not those of that bird. We have equally 

 startling differences proved to exist in the types of eggs of C. poliocephalus, and, again, the 

 wonderful variations in the eggs of Caccomantis are quite as remarkable. 



