1842.] Malayan species of Cuculidce. 905 



do not differ in their colouring from ordinary females. The latter have 

 all the upper-parts fine rufous-bay, spotless (or nearly so) on the fore- 

 head, sides of the neck, and rump, but elegantly barred with dusky across 

 the scapularies, wings and tail, and faintly on the crown, hind-neck, 

 and interscapularies : under-parts barred more broadly than in the 

 male, including the lower tail-coverts, which in the male are spotless; 

 the throat, fore-neck, and breast, whitish along the middle, and stain- 

 ed with rufous laterally, having also dark bars more or less distinct ; 

 and there are the same white markings along the shafts, and at the 

 tips of the tail-feathers, as in the male of this in common with the 

 foregoing species, which white markings are wanting in C. niger and 

 probably Sonneratii. A specimen in full-grown nestling plumage has 

 the bill shorter, less curved, and wholly black; and the plumage 

 altogether as in the darker examples (which I believe are always 

 females) of the young of C. canorus : the head, neck, and smaller 

 wing-coverts, being dusky-black, margined, as is the whole upper 

 plumage, with white; fore-neck and breast the same, but with a 

 white bar across the middle of each feather; a similar bar, but 

 faint rufous, across the scapularies and interscapularies, and tw.o or 

 more such bars on the upper tail-coverts; tail as in the female, 

 but having the white markings more produced, as are also the rufous 

 bars of the primaries. 



Upon a former occasion, I referred this species to C. Sonneratii,* 

 but have since met with another from peninsular India which I 

 cannot doubt is the latter, while the adult male of the present one is 

 distinctly the C. poliocephalus of Latham. It appears to be peculiar 

 to the Himalaya, and the specimens here described are from Darjeel- 

 ing. I have been informed that its note is proportionally very loud.f 



* Vol. XI, p. 168. 



f Here may be noticed the C. rubeculus, Swainson, Nat. Libr., Birds of Western 

 Africa^ II, 181. " Wings six inches and a half long; breast and sides of the neck 

 rufous ; body beneath fulvous-white, with broad black bars ; tail black, with thi-ee 

 white spots down the shaft; the tips white. This Cuckoo is at once known from the 

 last [C. nigricans, Swainson, — " Above and beneath black, glossed with blue; 

 quills internally white, with blackish bands ; tips of the lateral tail-feathers 

 whitish ; bill and legs black ;"] by the colour of its tail and the greater breadth of 

 the black bars on the body. A young specimen, in a state of moulting, has obviously 

 been prepared by the Senegal bird-stuffers ; but what we consider as the adult bird is 

 a specimen sent, as we are informed, from India : both, however, agree in the length 



6 c 



