r 
COUCAL. 
“ coop ” and the balance rattled off. Who, hearing in the early morning this 
curious call for the first time, has not wondered from what bird it could possibly 
come ? I did, and put it down to some sort of Heron, for the sound came from 
the creek. But a few days later I found I had made a mistake, and so did the 
Coucal, which enabled me to make the following observations : Feathers of the 
neck lanceolate, stiff, harsh, and spiny ; tail that is much too long for its body, 
and over which it appears to exercise very little control ; an exaggerated lark- 
like spur on one of its hind toes, a pair of very keen hawk-like eyes, a deep keeled 
breast-bone and thick, meaty thighs, and a strong, capacious stomach, which 
was crammed with grasshoppers ; it was an immature specimen I had secured, 
immature to the extent that it had not yet attained to the black plumage state. 
What a strange bird this is. I have only one year’s experience of C. phasianus ; 
this was at Homestead, where I believe it to be a migratory bird, arriving there 
in the middle of September, and after spending the summer, leaving the district 
at the end of March or early in April. The only thing against this idea is that 
I shot one, the one just mentioned, on the 30th June, but of course it is possible 
odd birds remain through the winter ; but I saw or heard no others. Only 
to be found along the timbered creeks where the undergrowth is tall and rank. 
Their cry in the early morning, their favourite time, may be heard at a distance 
of two or three miles.” 
He continued {Emu, Vol. IV., p. 46, 1904) : “ From Homestead Mr. Smedley 
reported on 18th October, 1903, that Coucals had not so far shown up. In 
the autumn of the following year he wrote that they had all left by 18th May. 
Personally, I have never come across it on the upper parts of the Flinders, and 
I do not think it ever extends very far from the coast. Homestead is 128 miles 
east [west] of TownsviUe.” Later {Emu, Vol. VI., p. 45, 1906), he added : 
This is one of the birds that the edge of the basalt seems to block. I know 
of two instances of its being seen at the heads of creeks heading from the 
ranges, but it never follows them down to the river.” 
This species presents dichromatism in a pecuhar manner, and by means 
of subspecific differentiation, this can be more easily studied. A recent 
ornithologist meeting with dichromatism in another group became bewildered, 
and was fain to ascribe all variation to this cause, confusing geographic with 
individual variation and obscuring age variation by means of “ dichromatics.” 
Thus Gould concluding that the “ black ” form was adult and the “ striped ” 
form the immature plumage from the specimens from New South 
Wales, separated as geographic species the birds from the North and the 
North-west. 
In the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum, Vol. XIX., p. 340, 
1891, Shelley ignored these species and described the “ black ” bird as “ Adult 
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