NO. 4 AVIAN GENUS CLAMATOR — FRIEDMANN 6l 



more advanced in its development than its nestmate and it v^^as found 

 to leave the nest and forage and then return to it to be fed by the 

 foster-parents, who were more or less bound to the nest by the pres- 

 ence in it of their own less advanced chick. This was noted re- 

 peatedly, and suggested a degree of resourcefulness quite unexpected 

 in a bird at the nestling-fledgling stage. It also was another instance 

 of mutual survival, or, in other words, of the absence of evicting 

 behavior by the young cuckoo. 



FLEDGLING FEEDING BY ADULT CLAMATORS 



The feeding of well-grown, fledged, young crested cuckoos by 

 adults of their respective species has been reported for two of the 

 four species of the genus. In no case has convincing, corroborative 

 evidence been placed on record, but inasmuch as such behavior has an 

 evolutionary interest as atavisms it is necessary to mention them 

 here. The data are as follows : 



In India, Gill (1925, p. 283) claimed that he had often watched 

 adults of the jacobin cuckoo, C. jacohinus feeding fully fledged 

 young of their own kind, and that koels, Eudynamis scolopacea, do 

 this even more often and regularly. If this is correct the observations 

 have not been reported subsequently by other field students, and it is 

 possible that Gill mistook an adult female for a fully grown young 

 merely because he saw it being fed by another jacobin cuckoo. It is 

 known that this cuckoo does indulge in courtship feeding and it may 

 be this was what Gill really saw. Thus, in South Africa, Godfrey 

 (1939, p. 26) watched a melanistic and a pale morph of the jacobin 

 cuckoo feeding on caterpillars on the ground. The pale bird was seen 

 to pick up a caterpillar, pass it a few times back and forth along its 

 beak, and then to approach the black-phase bird with this in its bill. 

 It mounted the latter, gave it the caterpillar, and then mated with it. 



Similarly, many years earlier, in northeastern Africa, von Heuglin 

 (1869-1873) wrote of the great-spotted cuckoo, C. glandar'ms, that 

 he thought it occasionally took care of young of its own kind. It is not 

 possible to decide from his wording exactly what actions he witnessed, 

 but it may have been more a matter of premigrational flocking, as no 

 evidence of actual feeding of the young by the adults has been noted 

 since anywhere in its range. That this may be the real condition from 

 which von Heuglin gathered his impression is suggested by an ob- 

 servation of Ivy's (1901, p. 22), who, in eastern Cape Province, 

 found a pair of adults with five young birds late in February. He 

 considered that ". . . the old birds collected their broods previously 



