696 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol., XIII. 
No. V.—ON THE OCCURRENCE OF COCCYSTES COROMANDUS 
(THE RED-WINGED CRESTED CUCKOO) IN BOMBAY. 
It is not often that we have the opportunity of adding a new species to 
our list of local birds, but on the morning of 7th November a specimen of the 
very handsome Red-winged Crested Cuckoo (C, coromandus) was caught in the 
Society's museum, where it had no doubt sought shelter from the unwelcome 
attention of the crows, which are quicker even than the members of the 
Natural History Society to notice a stranger in the neighbourhood. That 
he should have happened to select the Society’s rooms for his refuge is 
curious—not to say thoughtful of the bird,—for this species has only once 
previously been recorded from any part of this Presidency, viz,, a single 
specimen obtained by Mr. G. W. Vidal at Savantvadi so long ago as January, 
1880, which specimen is in the Society’s collection. 
Mr. Blanford, in the third volume of Birds (Fauna of British India), 
prefaces his remarks on the distribution of the species with “this is a very 
rare bird in India.’ Its normal range extends from the base of the Hima- 
layas in Nepal eastwards through Assam and Eastern Bengal, throughout 
Burma and Pegu to the Malay Peninsula, Southern China, the Philippines, 
Borneo and Celebes, It also occurs in Ceylon where it is said to be migratory, 
arriving about October and leaving again in April, and the bird under notice 
may possibly have been making its way thither, 
The fact of its being in perfect adult plumage disposes of the possibility 
of its having escaped from captivity, for so shy a bird would at once show 
signs of confinement in a cage by damage to the edges of its long tail. 
The skin has been made into an excellent specimen for our collection. 
E. COMBER. 
Bompay, 20th November, 1900. 
No. VI.—BIRDS OF PREY. 
_ Yesterday I happened to be reading in our Journal, Vol. XIII., page 185, 
the query of Major Rodon with regard to Birds of Prey. Curiously enough, 
an incident that occurred early that morning furnishes a reply. 
On ajhilin Mataundh, Banda District, yesterday morning, I shot a teal, 
which fell in some grass on the shore, Ihad to make a detour to reach it, 
and in the meantime a large hawk, that the shikari called ligar, swooped 
down on the teal. When we reached the spot the hawk flew to a hillock, a 
few yards off, leaving only feathers where it had been eating on the shore, 
I said to the shzkari that the hawk must have carried off the fragments in 
its beak, I fired and wounded the hawk, having no shot large enough to 
hit it, and it flew away, carrying nothing in its beak. But on the hillock 
