24 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I46 



Copsychus saularis saularis Zoothera citrina citrina 



Enicurus schistaceus Turdus protomelas 



Myiophoneus caeruleus teniminckii Laiiius schach tricolor 



As we have already noted, when the Indian population of pied 

 cuckoos (pica) began extending their range northward into the foot- 

 hills of the Himalayas and found themselves removed from the 

 habitat of the babblers of the genus Turd aides that had served them 

 as fosterers in the plains, they began using the larger species of 

 Garrulax. This change was probably already incipient in the pica 

 stock, as it had become very pronounced and fixed in the earlier 

 evolutionary offshoot from pica that resulted in C. coromandus. 

 There must certainly have been a considerable time span involved in 

 the evolution of the red- winged from the pied cuckoo, whereas the 

 northward spread of the latter seems to have been fairly recent. 



Clamator glandarius (fig. 7, p. 25) 



The great-spotted cuckoo is the most advanced of the four species 

 of Clamator, and is closer to C. coromandus than to either of the 

 others. From the circumstantial evidence of the current situation in 

 the genus, it is justified to conclude that glandarius was an evolution- 

 ary development from the stock at present represented by coromandus. 

 Hence, it seems probable that it originated somewhere near the north- 

 eastern portion of the range of that species. Moving eastward, the 

 primordial glandarius came into contact with magpies, a group of 

 sizable, suitable, potential fosterers until then unaffected by any 

 parasitic cuckoo, and to them it became adapted with marked success. 

 Advancing farther eastward glandarius met with magpies in southern 

 Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, etc., in areas of warmer climate than the 

 Himalayan foothills and slopes of northern Assam, Bhutan, and 

 Sikkim, where its ancestors may have first encountered their magpie 

 hosts. In fact, the presence of the latter birds may well have expedited 

 the eastward shift of early glandarius. Being essentially a warm 

 climate form, glandarius left its original locus and eventually became a 

 circum-Mediterranean species, still largely in areas of sympatry 

 with the magpie, although becoming allopatric with it in eastern 

 Egypt, where it used crows as hosts instead. At that stage of its 

 history glandarius was largely contained within the range of its magpie 

 host, and its great spread to sub-Saharan Africa, completely away 

 from this fosterer, came much later. 



It is conceivable, though, in the nature of things not demonstrable, 

 that possible competition from the corvine parasitism of the koel. 



