THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 9 
NOTES ON CUCKOOS. 
(By Mr. L. Harrison. Read at the Monthly Meeting, December 7th, 1905) 
Tuer cuckoo family is spread throughout the whole world, and 
embraces a number of genera. which are widely different in 
habits and appearance, but nearly all of which have one 
peculiarity In common. With the exception of the American 
cuckoos, the so-called swamp pheasants, and one or two other 
isolated species, every member of the group is a parasite, and 
devolves the task of rearing its young upon some smaller bird. 
The exceptions do build primitive nests of their own. It is on 
the subject of this parasitic habit that Iam going to speak; 
but a short preamble about the cuckoos of Australia may prove 
interesting. 
First of all—and I suppose the question has already arisen 
in your minds—not one of our cuckoos utters a call sound- 
ing anything like the word ‘“ cuckoo,” the Spring call of the 
European species, except perhaps its congenor, Ouculus inter- 
medius, from North Australia, of whose habits and economy 
little appears to be known. Still there are points of similarity. 
Wordsworth says of the Huropean bird: “‘ Cuckoo shall] TI call 
thee bird, or but a wandering voice?” There is a great deal 
of the wandering voice about some of our species, and they are 
far more often heard than seen. I have stood under a fine 
large eucalypt for nearly half an hour, whilst a’cuckoo shrieked 
himself hoarse amongst the branches without being able to see 
him. It is not that the voice is really ventriloquistic, as is the 
‘case with a number of birds, but it rings through the air in a 
disembodied fashion which renders it difficult to trace to its 
source. So, too, with the fan-tailed cuckoo, a bird common in 
the sandstone gullies about Sydney; but, although its rolling 
note may come to the ear from all sides, the bird is rarely seen 
unless you look for it carefully. 
The Huropean cuckoo has, traditionally at any rate, a cheer- 
ful note ; but our species, with the exception of the pallid and 
brush cuckoos, seem to be oppressed with all the ills that flesh 
is heir to, and one or two more besides. 
Australian cuckoos range in size from the Channel-bill of 
the North Coast, a bird which the older writers classed as a 
horn-bill or a toucan, and which is certainly very little like a 
cuckoo, and the swamp pheasant, down to the little bronze 
cuckoos, the intervening species comprising one koel, two 
Cuculus, two Cacomantis, and a Misocalius. Of these we get 
five species in the neighbourhood of Sydney—the pallid, fan- 
tailed, brush, bronze, and narrow-billed bronze cuckoos. ‘The 
Sydney species, with the exception perhaps of the two little 
