54 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I46 



tempted to fight back, even when one of the bulbuls yanked out a 

 tuft of whitish breast feathers from one of the intruders. Milstein 

 watched this repeated series of attacks for over an hour and a half. 

 Several hours later he returned and examined the nest which he 

 found contained two eggs of the bulbul and four larger, pure white 

 eggs of a cuckoo. One of the white eggs was on the rim of the nest, 

 almost falling out ; this one Milstein was inclined to assume had been 

 laid by the stripe-breasted cuckoo during his absence. It was very 

 slightly pinkish, which he interpreted as indicating extreme freshness. 

 The white eggs measured 25.2 to 27 by 20.7 to 22.2 mm., agreeing with 

 known eggs of both levaillantii and jacobinus in size, and with 

 jacobinus eggs in color. If they were laid by levaillantii, they add a 

 third egg type to the known range of its egg colors. 



ClamatoT coromandus 



The red- winged crested cuckoo lays but a single type of egg, uni- 

 form greenish bluish, slightly glossy, and averaging about 26.9 x 22.8 

 mm. According to Baker, who has studied it more extensively than 

 anyone else, its eggs show good adaptive resemblance to those of its 

 usual hosts, laughing-thrushes of the genus Garrulax. 



Clamator glandarius 



The great-spotted cuckoo also lays but one egg type, pale greenish 

 white to pale greenish gray, abundantly spotted and flecked with 

 fairly evenly distributed tiny dots and larger markings of various 

 shades of yellowish brown, reddish brown, umber, grayish brown, 

 and slate gray, many of the blotches with a pale lilac tone or under- 

 marking. In many eggs the blotches tend to be more numerous to- 

 ward the large pole and in some they almost fuse to form a ring there, 

 but in others there is no such local concentration. In size they vary 

 from 29.1 to 35.2 by 22.6 to 26.5 mm. 



This is definitely an "advanced" egg pattern, more developed than 

 the uniform ones of the other three species of Clamator. In a sense 

 the pinkish eggs of levaillantii with their faint speckling of darker 

 pink may be looked upon as foreshadowing the development that took 

 place in glandarius. Makatsch (1955 pp. 218-220) has discussed the 

 evolution of spotted from uniform egg coloration in cuckoos, and 

 concluded, as I do, that these patterned eggs represent the climax 

 stage, and not, as Baker and von Boxberger did, the early stage. 



The eggs of the great-spotted cuckoo are smaller than those of its 

 corvine hosts, although as large as, or larger than, those of its sturnid 



