48 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I46 



Clamator levaillantii 



Data on 23 nests containing 28 eggs of the stripe-breasted cuckoo 

 reveal that 23 were singles when laid, and 5, or a little under 20 

 percent, were multiples. Of the 23 parasitized nests, 20, or 87 percent, 

 had but a single cuckoo egg each, while 3, or 13 percent, had been 

 parasitized more than once (2 had 2, and 1 had 4 cuckoo eggs). 



Other Genera 



A still higher incidence of multiple eggs is known to characterize 

 the brood parasitism of another genus of cuckoos in southeastern 

 Asia, the koel, Eiidynamis scolopacea. This large, sexually dimorphic 

 cuckoo is parasitic chiefly on crows, to the eggs of which its own 

 show much resemblance. In its host selection it is, thus, comparable 

 to Clamator glandarius. Baker (1942, p. 153) gives the following 

 data on the koel, culled mainly from observations in India. 



Out of 223 koel eggs laid in 93 parasitized crow nests, 93 were 

 singles when laid, and 130, or a little over 58 percent were multiples. 

 Of the 93 nests, 36, or 38.7 percent, held a single koel tgg each ; 57, or 

 61.3 percent, contained multiple eggs. The greatest number of 

 parasitic eggs in any one nest was 16, but in 75 percent of the nests 

 1, or not more than 2, koel eggs were present; 8 nests had 3 koel 

 eggs each, 7 had 4, 4 had 5, 1 each held 6, 7, 9, 11, and 16 koel eggs 

 respectively. That Baker's data are not atypical is shown by many 

 published observations on this cuckoo by others. Thus, to take only 

 a single such note, Hopwood (1912, pp. 1211-1212) found koels to 

 be unusually abundant at Arakan, Burma, and to be "wasteful" of 

 their eggs. In one crow nest, apparently forsaken by its builder, he 

 found seven koel eggs, which appeared to have been laid by at least 

 three different individuals, and none of the crow. 



In the European cuckoo, Cucuhis canorus, by contrast, we find 

 the birds almost always lays but one tgg in a nest and it is relatively 

 seldom that more than one hen uses the same nest. Thus, Baker 

 listed 3,711 eggs of several races of this cuckoo in his collection, and 

 from his various statements it is possible to estimate that in only 86 

 out of 3,617 parasitized nests were there more than a single cuckoo 

 egg. To put it a different way, out of 3,711 eggs of Cucuhis canorus 

 3,617 were singles when laid, and 94, or about 2.5 percent, were 

 multiples. 



While in Cuculus canorus, with its wide range of egg variability, it 

 is possible to distinguish multiple eggs from the same hen, from eggs 

 of multiple hens, this usually is not readily feasible in some species 



