NO. 4 AVIAN GENUS CLAMATOR — FRIEDMANN 87 



Clamator levaillantii 



As in C. jacobimis, the population of the stripe-breasted cuckoo 

 breeding south of the Zambezi leaves that area after the end of the 

 southern summer in late March, and does not return until October. 

 Elsewhere in Africa it has been noted as a local migrant, or at least 

 as a fluctuating element in the avifauna, locally present one day and 

 absent the next. In Nyasaland it has been recorded from early 

 October to May and even to June, and has been known to breed there. 

 It is assumed by Benson (1953) that it migrates to somewhere to the 

 north for the rest of the year. In the Rhodesias, where it also is 

 known to breed, it is also seasonal, although further data are needed, 

 especially from Northern Rhodesia, to clarify the local picture. Thus, 

 in that country the earliest spring date is given as November 8, a 

 month later than in South Africa ( !) and the latest autumn date as 

 May 4. Grant and Mackworth-Praed (1952, p. 506) wrote that it 

 passes through Northern Rhodesia in November and December to 

 breed farther south, and concluded that "there is certainly a northern 

 and a southern breeding bird but this is probably not the whole story." 



The seemingly haphazard occurrence of the species in localities 

 where it has been found to be present or absent without obvious sea- 

 sonal correlations, was stressed by Jackson (1938, pp. 497-498) in 

 both Kenya and Uganda, although the species has been recorded 

 there throughout the year. In Tanganyika the picture also is still 

 confusing. Moreau (1937b, p. 23) noted that the only localities in 

 that country where the species had been recorded as breeding were 

 Iringa, from February to March ; the east side of Lake Nyasa, in 

 May; at Kilosa, in April. He recorded that it had been seen at 

 Kigoma and at Uvinza in November, when it was molting. He con- 

 sidered it not unlikely that the nonbreeding birds in Kenya and 

 northern Tanganyika may have been migrants from Ethiopian breed- 

 ing grounds, while the southern Tanganyikan birds ". . . in the east 

 up as far as the Central Line represent a different population breed- 

 ing there and with their own movements . . ." 



In coastal Kenya and the adjacent parts of northeastern Tan- 

 ganyika, Percival {in Bannerman, 1910, p. 704) concluded that 

 the stripe-breasted cuckoo was present as a "visitor" for a matter of 

 only about 6 weeks in the year. However, this is erroneous, as speci- 

 mens of the local melanistic morph have been taken in that restricted 

 area in every month of the year except July and August, and the 

 present lack of records for those 2 months is not indicative of ab- 



