NO. 4 AVIAN GENUS CLAMATOR — FRIEDMANN 9I 



it was absent from August to December in Egypt (not merely upper 

 Egypt) ; he noted a marked northward passage at Wadi Haifa, 

 Aswan, and Luxor in early February, when groups of from 10 to 20 

 individuals were seen passing slowly down the Nile Valley. The 

 same author (1954, pp. 306-307) found this cuckoo to be a regular 

 but infrequent migrant in Arabia, considerable numbers going through 

 in late March and April — a rather late date compared with the earlier 

 passages farther west. 



In Eritrea, K. D. Smith (1957, p. 308) recorded a definite influx 

 of birds in the coastal plain between December and March. The birds 

 were common in summer (July and August) below 3,000 feet, and 

 were absent from Eritrea in the winter. 



Cave and Macdonald (1955, p. 174) considered this cuckoo both 

 a resident and a nonbreeding (wintering) visitor in Sudan, but were 

 unable to say to which of these categories most of the individuals 

 belong. In the Darfur Province, Lynes (1925, pp. 353-354) worked 

 out the local situation in greater detail. He concluded that there were 

 two distinct groups of cuckoos, one composed of individuals that bred 

 farther to the south in equatorial or in southern Africa, and which 

 spent their off-season farther north than Darfur, and merely passed 

 through the area twice a year, and another group of Mediterranean 

 breeding birds that migrated through Darfur in smaller numbers than 

 the southern breeders. The southern breeders passed through Darfur 

 from May until August, reaching their greatest numbers in June and 

 July. Lynes found that these included adults, immature birds, and 

 birds of the year, the last varying from 3 to 6 months in age, but 

 not in molt, while the adult and subadult birds were molting. He 

 further noted that in its middle period the passage was rapid, the 

 birds arriving chiefly very early in the morning after some amount of 

 nocturnal travel, and moving on during the day, lingering only to 

 feed. The migration ended in late July, and no more were seen for 

 3 months, except for one stray young bird about 4 months old 

 collected on August 20. The Palaearctic breeding migrants passed 

 through Darfur in November and December. Lynes found no 

 resident breeding great-spotted cuckoos in Darfur, but it would seem 

 that further observations may demonstrate that the species breeds 

 there regularly, although perhaps not abundantly. It may be recalled 

 that some years after Lynes did his field studies. Madden (1934 pp. 

 94-95) saw a young fledgling of this cuckoo being attended by its 

 foster-parents, a pair of the starling, Lamprotornis caudatus, at 

 Khuwei, southern Darfur. Farther to the east, at Dembo, near the 



