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HIEKOCOCCYX YAKUTS. 
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, pibuba, repeated 
several times, each time in a higher note than the last, till they become exceedingly loud and shrill. Mr. Elliott 
makes it whi-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 can 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. Bligli informs me 
that it calls at night ; he found it frequenting the skirts of the jungle bordering the grassy wastes on the 
Harangolla patnas. 
Nidification. — 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 Malcicocerd, 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.” 
