208 
Bh’ds of Celebes: Cucnlidae. 
Meyer has described the Black-billed Keel (13) as “shy and lively in 
its actions. Roosts in the darkest spots^ in trees, where it can hardly be 
detected. If danger threatens, or if it hears a particnlar noise which frightens 
it, it communicates its alarm from afar to others; and it is no fable that the 
natives are warned by the bird hours before — if, for instance, a troop of 
horsemen approaches, or an official with his attendants. The native therefore 
often makes his preparations according to this bird’s behaviour; hearing it in the 
forest he will always be cautious. But its cry at night he consults as an oracle, 
and converses with the bird by imitating its cry and interpreting it. If he hears 
it at night near a house he augurs the death of a man”. 
“I found mostly nutmegs in its stomach. Before nutmegs were cultivated 
in the Minahassa, which is only during the last few years [prior to 1871], the 
bird fed on different fruits, chiefly waringuis, but now nearly altogether on 
nutmegs, which it swallows whole for the sake of the rind; the nutmeg itself 
is found uninjured in the crop or stomach; and the bird contributes greatly to 
the distribution of this spice. It damages the plantations very much. It is said 
to seek its food at night”. 
Meyer learnt that it lays its eggs in other birds’ nests, but could not ascertain 
in which, and the cousins Sarasin have recently produced proof of its parasitic 
habits through the young one described above, which was “brought in a nest 
which the boy ascribed (in our opinion, however, incorrectly) to Enodes 
erythrophrys^\ Many interesting facts on the breeding of Eudynamis honorata (L.) 
in India are recorded in Hume’s “Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds” (Oates, ed. 
1891, II, 392 — 397); this species always dej)osits its eggs in Crows’ nests, usually 
that of Corvus splendens. So, too, in Burmah E. malayana Cab. & Heine lays 
its eggs, says Mr. Oates, in the nests of Crows; and Dr. Tiraud states that 
in Cochin China the eggs are also placed in the nests of Mynahs (B. Brit. 
Burmah II, 120). E. mindanensis also makes use of a Mynah’s nest (Whitehead, 
Ibis 1888, 410). It will therefore very probably be found that in Celebes 
Corvus enca is one, perhajDS the most usual, foster-parent of E. melanorhyncha. 
In India the Cuckoo sometimes pays dearly for her imposition; Corvus cid- 
minatus^ writes Mr. Anderson, “is easely duped, while her cunning congener, 
C. splendens, is fully aware of the deception”. Colonel Butler records a case 
of a female specimen being mobbed to death by crows, and of a male (which, 
as Mr. Anderson says, frequently accompanies the female when she is about 
to deposit her egg), being so harried by two Crows that he was able to take 
it by hand. Naturalists, who believe in protective mimicry, may wonder that 
the males of Eudynamis are black corvine-looking birds, while their females, to 
whom a deceptive resemblance to the Crows might be of value, differ greatly 
in coloration. 
The young are black, as Mr. Whitehead states in the allied E. mindanensis 
(Ibis 1888, 410, Expl. Kini Balu 1893, 145), and Capt. Shelley in E. honorata^ 
resembling the adult males instead of, as is much more usual among birds, the 
