242 HIEROCOCCTX YARIUS. 



notes are to be heard in the breeding-season, from April till July in the south of India (but beginning earlier 

 in Bengal, according to Blyth), in every garden or avenue. It sounds something like pibuba, pibitba, repeated 

 several times, each time in a higher note than the last, till they become exceedingly lond and shrill. Mr. Elliott 

 makes it ivhi-wheeba; Sundevall calls it piripiu. This author further remarks that each word is pronounced 

 about twice, nearly in this manner in the musical scale, C B B A — A C C B — B DDC; and it thus mounts 

 the scale of notes at every second cry, three or four times, till the note is as high as the bird cau raise it, when 



it makes a short pause and begins anew It lives both on caterpillars and other soft insects and on 



fruits, and it is very fond of the fig of the banyan and other Fici." It is said by the natives in India to be 

 good eating ; but Mr. Fairbank says that he tried it, and found the flesh intolerably strong-flavoured, which 

 is not to be wondered at, as, according to his investigations, it feeds on lizards and insects. Its flight is strong 

 and swift, and it has been noticed to have the habit of darting suddenly into bushes, to the manifest alarm 

 of small birds, who sometimes mistake it for the Shikra and pursue it accordingly. Mr. Bligh informs me 

 that it calls at night ; he found it frequenting the skirts of the jungle bordering the grassy wastes on the 

 Haraugolla patnas. 



Xif/ification. — The eggs of this species have not yet been identified, as far as I have been able to ascertain. 

 It is believed to deposit them in the nests of the Malacocerci, or Babblers. Jerdon saw these birds feeding a 

 young one, which was following them about screaming ; he writes that, " on one occasion, at least, there were 

 two or three young Malacocerci in company ; so that the young of this species of Cuckoo does not always eject 

 the young of its foster-parent from the nest." 



