FAN-TAILED CUCKOO. 
note such as I had never heard before, and thinking it must be a new species to 
this district, I followed it up to identify it, when much to my surprise I found 
it came from a Fan-tail Cuckoo, which was perched low down on a dead branch of 
a box tree, and I watched it from a short distance for some little time, it calling 
in the strange note the while, then suddenly it flew down to the ground, and 
picked up what appeared to be a caterpillar. They usually place their eggs in 
nests which are not of an open description, but what might be described as a 
covered dome-shaped nest, and very often those placed upon the ground, many 
of which it would be quite impossible for so large a bird as the present species to 
get into, so they must lay their egg upon the ground, and then place it in the nest 
with their beak. In my oological collection I have their eggs taken with sixteen 
species of foster-parents.” 
Mr. Edwin Ashby’s notes read : “ This Cuckoo is migratory in South 
Australia, reaching our Blackwood district fairly regularly in the first week of 
April, their weak, mournful whistle quickly caUing attention to the newcomer. 
The whistle is a very soft mournful trill of about six notes with a downward 
inflection. They leave our district at the end of June or early in July, though 
I believe a few odd ones stay in parts of the country into the summer. I noted 
several of these birds on 26th October, 1909, at Middle River, Kangaroo Island, 
and concluded that they were breeding birds. It seems probable that a certain 
number may stay right through the year on Kangaroo Island, but it would need 
a good deal of further investigation before this suggestion could be proved correct 
or otherwise. In Victoria, wherever I have been in the spring, especially near 
Mount Dandenong, this Cuckoo has been met with in very great numbers. There 
they have a habit of settling high up in the lofty gums and utter a loud whistling 
cry very distinct from the mournful whistle before referred to as the ordinary 
note of this Cuckoo when in South Australia. So rarely is this call heard in 
South Australia that at first I thought the Victorian bird a different bird 
altogether. Evidently the call I refer to is only made use of in the breeding- 
season. In the Richmond Ranges near Mallanganee in northern New South 
Wales these Cuckoos were almost as numerous as in Victoria in the month of 
November, 1912. In May, 1889, 1 noted a good many of this Cuckoo at Etticup, 
now called Broome Hill, West Australia ; upon comparing skins I coUecffed 
there with those collected by myself in various parts of this State and at Evelyn, 
in Victoria, I cannot note any difference in the skins, but in a skin collected by 
myself on November 7th, 1912, at MaUanganee, northern New South Wales, in 
the tropical district bordering the Richmond River, I find the rufous coloration 
extends over the whole of the underside corresponding very closely with a skin 
I collected on September 29th, 1903, in the BlackaU Range, Queensland. This is 
suggestive of a tendency for the rufous coloration of the underside to increase 
315 
