88 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I46 



sence. Further evidence of the nonmigratory status of this cuckoo 

 in that area is afforded by the fact that during the more than half 

 a century since Percival's work many and very comprehensive collec- 

 tions and observations have been made in practically all parts of Kenya 

 at all times of the year, and not a single example of the black morph 

 (the so-called "alhonotahts") has ever been collected outside of the 

 coastal strip, except for one very surprising, but apparently ac- 

 ceptably authenticated record, taken by Percival, at 10,000 feet on 

 Mount Kenya. As mentioned in our discussion of polymorphism (pp. 

 70-75) this last record would seem better interpreted as an unusual 

 local melanism of the population of C. levaillantii resident on Mount 

 Kenya, than as a migrant from the coastal lowlands. 



In the Republic of the Congo (former Belgian Congo), Chapin 

 (1939, pp. 181-182) treated it as a resident bird in the Uele and in 

 most other lowland savannahs, absent from forested areas, but known 

 to breed in May and October (fledglings taken). Further to the north, 

 in the Sudan, Cave and Macdonald (1955, p. 174) found it to be a 

 common nonbreeding visitor between March and October, while in 

 Darfur Lynes (1925, p. 354) concluded it was a rather infrequent 

 summer visitor to the West Basin. In Mali, according to Malzy 

 (1962, p. 34) the stripe-breasted cuckoo is a local migrant, common 

 at the close of the rainy season, seen at Bamako from July to 

 November. 



It is not clear as yet if the species leaves its Ethiopian breeding 

 grounds (where it breeds from June to September) during the north- 

 em winter, but it may well do so in the highlands, thereby adding 

 to the confusing population in Kenya to the south and in Sudan to 

 the west. In Eritrea, K. D. Smith (1957, p. 309) called it a "pre- 

 sumed resident" but had only scanty evidence. 



The movements of the species in West Africa are still uncertainly 

 known. Bannerman (1933, pp. 108-110) could only say that a ". . . 

 corresponding movement to those which take place in East Africa 

 certainly occurs in West Africa, but observers being fewer we have 

 less data . . ." He found from his compiled records that it appeared 

 to have been met with only seldom between July and November south 

 of latitude 12°, It is known to breed in Ghana (February) and in 

 Nigeria (July). In the latter country, Marchant (1953, p. 45) found 

 it to be an uncommon transient from December to February. By 

 this he probably meant to infer that it wintered somewhere to the 

 south and bred to the north, but he made no geographic guesses as 

 to how far in each direction its migration extended. The species is 



