PALLID CUCKOO. 
It is probable that the above obtained from the Palsearctic Cuculus do 
not absolutely apply to Austrahan Cuckoos and, moreover, that the peculiar 
habits of the different Australian genera. Heteroscenes, Caconmntis, Owenavis, 
Lam'prococcyx, N enchalcites disagree. So far most Australian ornithologists 
have lumped their observations, so that it is to be hoped some one will undertake 
the careful discrimination of the known facts in connection with the different 
groups. Thus in the Emu, Vol. V., p. 145, 1906, Mattingley gave notes on 
principles governing movement in Cuckoos and migration in birds, and 
apparently furnished a complete paper to the Ninth Session of the Australasian 
Ornithologists’ Union at Adelaide which does not appear to have been printed, 
the official account {Emu, Vol. IX., p. 1 10, 1910) reading : “ A valuable paper 
was then read by Mr. A. H. E. Mattingley, C.M.Z.S., etc., on ‘ Cuckoos.’ It 
has been contended, he said, that Cuckoos select suitable foster-parents and 
with diabolical cunning place their eggs in nests of other birds whose eggs 
harmonise in colour with those laid by the Cuckoo. The statistical data 
obtained by me, the careful comparison of which has taken me several months 
to prepare, shows that these haphazard statements have no foundation what- 
ever in fact. Only an infinitesimal percentage of Cuckoo eggs closely 
approximate the colour, shape, markings and size of those of their foster- 
parents. Then, again, instances are fairly numerous in which the Cuckoo, 
an insectivorous bird, places its eggs in the nests of graminivorous birds, with 
the result that the young Cuckoos, after being hatched out, invariably die 
for want of proper nourishment, due to the lack of insect food, so necessary 
in their rearing, and which is not supplied them by their grain-eating foster- 
parents. The placing of their eggs in the nests of graminivorous birds by 
Cuckoos shows that their so-called instinct is either at fault or not present. 
Tlien, again, we have Cuckoos placing their eggs in the nests of other birds 
already containing Cuckoo’s eggs. Had the Cuckoo the knowledge, instinctive 
or otherwise, of the habit possessed by its young ones of ejecting any other 
occupant of the nest, be it eggs or young foster-brethren, it would most assuredly 
have placed its eggs in the nest of some other bird devoid of eggs of the Cuckoo 
tribe, so as to enable its offspring to survive. Then again, the size of the bird 
and the colour of plumage of the foster-parents selected is in most cases dis- 
proportionate. The type of nest, too, selected by the same species of Cuckoo 
varies considerably. Most of the Cuckoos also place their eggs in nests that 
are much too small for their offspring when it has grown to a size ready to 
fly away. The comfort of their offspring is apparently not considered by 
Cuckoos. In not a single authentic case have I been able to trace the pecuhar 
habits that Cuckoos possess of foisting the incubation of their eggs on to other 
species of birds, as well as the feeding and rearing of their young afterwards. 
VOL. vn. 
305 
