THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
inflection, is most penetrating and can be beard for a long distance. The bird 
keeps it up in spring throughout a large part of the night, much to the dis- 
comfort of intending sleepers. Although the whistle referred to is the normal 
note it sometimes adds a few notes resembling the call of the Austrahan Pipit. 
This year (1917) the birds commenced calling at the end of June as the YeUow- 
mmped Tits had then commenced building (very early) : probably the Cuckoo 
was caUing a little earher than usual. I note that small birds are often disturbed 
by the call of the Cuckoo, and suggest that the keeping up of the continuous 
whistle is intended to cause the small birds to reveal the neighbourhood of 
their nests by their agitation. Wliile the favourite foster-parents of this 
Cuckoo are the Blue Wren {M. cyanochlamys) and the Yellow-rumped Tit 
{Oedbasileus chrysorrhous), I have found their eggs in the nests of the New 
Holland Honey-eater and the White-fronted Chat. In looking through my 
specimens I find a great variation in the extent of the barring on the underside 
in two specimens, both females ; in one skin almost the whole of the under- 
surface is barred and the under tail-coverts strongly spotted, and in the other 
the bars are absent from tlie centre of breast and abdomen and the under tail- 
coverts only show a few streaks.” 
IMr. J. W. Mellor has written me : “ The Narrow-billed Bronze Cuckoo is 
fairly numerous here in the spring and summer months ; the principal birds that 
they select as foster-parents are the Blue Wrens, and I have taken a great many 
of their single eggs from the nests of these which contain generally three eggs 
in addition to that of the Cuckoo, whose eggs are speckled with deep reddish- 
brown, the same as those of the Wren. The Cuckoos generally lay from August 
to October.” 
Mr. H. S. Dove, from Tasmania, writes : “ A Bronze Cuckoo which I judge 
to be the Narrow-billed was sitting on a wire early in the morning of November 
11th calling continuously with a plaintive, penetrating note : the flanks were 
very distinctly barred, but not, so far as I could make out, the middle of the 
breast and abdomen. It calls also while flying from perch to perch. On 
November 25th the same bird still calling from the same place. On 26th another 
making continually its plaintive call of “ see-ee,” very penetrating in a tea- tree 
paddock, which is much frequented by these birds : another at Mersey Bluff 
calls with a shorter, rounder note like “ Phee-u ” often repeated : this latter may 
be the Broad-biUed species. However, on October 5th, a Bronze Cuckoo sitting 
on a stump in the bush paddock, uttering “ Phee-u ” plaintively, about twelve 
times in rapid succession, ventriloquially, the first notes seeming far away, then 
produced louder with widely opened bill so that they seem close by, just as 
BuUer describes the caU of C. lucidus in New Zealand : the notes conclude 
more distantly. This bird had no bands on the breast, as far as I could see in 
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