Chapter C: J. Maynard (1896) says (5)

An egg with a white ground lightly marked, chiefly at the larger end, with specks, spots, or small blotches of red, reddish brown, or brown. These eggs are excellent counterparts in all but size of the eggs of the fantail warbler, in whose tiny nest they are usually deposited.

The next commonest type has the ground color more or less distinctly tinged with reddish and is rather more profusely marked with larger blotches of various shades of red-brown. These are normally deposited in the nests of various species of _Suya_, or brown hill warbler, the most common types of whose eggs agree well with those of the cuckoo.

A third and common type of cuckoo’s egg has the ground color a beautiful salmon-pink or buff-pink and has the surface freckled with deeper reddish; in some cases so finely and thickly that the eggs appear at first glance to be unicolored; in other cases more or less boldly, though sparsely, covered with reddish brown and underlying faint marks of gray or pale purple. These eggs agree well with various types of eggs laid by the verditer flycatcher and, even still more so, with those of the beautiful niltava (_Niltava sundara_), while it is in the nests of these birds we find them deposited. Cuckoos, however, that normally deposit their eggs in the nest of these birds seem regularly also to cuckold the large niltava (_N. grandis_) and the white-tailed chat (_Muscisylvia notodela_), which lay the same colored eggs and make similar cup-shaped nests of living moss, built in exactly similar positions in holes in banks and among boulders.

Another beautiful type is bright pale blue, often immaculate but sometimes faintly flecked with primary reddish and secondary gray blotches. In the Khasia Hills these are almost invariably deposited in the nests of the silver-eared _Mesia_ or the red-billed _Leiothrix_ (_L. lutea calypga_), two species that lay exactly the same type of egg to that of the cuckoo, though more boldly blotched, while the two species also make similar nests, which they place in somewhat similar positions in bushes, etc.

In Burma, more especially in the Ruby Mines district and in the Shan States, we have two dominant types of eggs: One blue, much darker in tint than those referred to as being deposited in _Leiothrix_ nests, laid with the similar eggs of the Burmese dark gray bushchat (_Rhodophila ferrea haringtoni_), and the other having a pale pink ground, freely blotched all over with reddish, deposited in the nests of the Burmese stonechat (_Saxicola caprata burmanica_), which also lays eggs of this color and character. In connection with these two types of egg an interesting state of affairs has now been arrived at in parts of the Shan States. Thirty years ago the bushchat was extremely common in certain districts in hills between 4,000 and 5,000 feet, and the great majority of cuckoos found there were those laying blue eggs. Cultivation has now wiped out the scrub and bush jungle, beloved by the bushchat, and fields of rice, gardens, and the vegetation surrounding villages have taken its place. With this change in the character of the jungle growth has also come a change in the birds frequenting it, the bushchat has almost disappeared, and the little stonechat has taken its place, breeding everywhere in gardens, village grounds, and cultivated fields. The elimination of the bushchat, although so recent, has already gone far to eliminate also the cuckoo that lays blue eggs, while the one that lays eggs like those of the stonechat has become much more numerous and has become the common form. Even now, however, an occasional blue egg of a cuckoo will be found in the stonechats’ nests, the latter similar in every respect to the nests of the bushchat and therefore cuckolded, _faute de mieux_, by the cuckoo.

It is impossible here to deal with the problem of the evolution of the various types of cuckoos’ eggs, but the facts recorded above seem to go far toward proving that cuckoo eggs, to assimilate with those of their fosterers, have been evolved by discrimination among the foster parents leading to the slow but sure destruction of the unfit, i. e., Darwin’s doctrine of the survival of the fittest in its crudest form.

In shape the eggs are rather broader ovals than those of the European cuckoo, and they also average larger and heavier. It is indeed much easier to separate the various subspecies of cuckoo by the eggs they lay than by the plumage of the birds that lay them.

The number of eggs laid by the Khasia Hills cuckoo probably varies somewhat individually, though I believe it generally to be 12 to 20. It is, however, very difficult to decide this definitely, as it is impossible to be satisfied that every nest of the selected fosterer in any given area has without doubt been marked down. It was not until 1907 that I concentrated on the attempt to solve any one of the numerous cuckoo problems, and it was some years after this before satisfactory evidence had accumulated on this particular point. My different series of eggs of individual cuckoos vary greatly in number, being, I believe, governed entirely by the number of nests of the foster parent available in the area searched over. In 1908, on May 25, in one small grass glade surrounded by pine forest I found five nests of _Cisticola_, three containing young cuckoos or eggs of the cuckoo, and I am practically sure that I missed no _Cisticola_ or _Suya_ nests. One of these nests had in it a young cuckoo about 2 days old, another nest had a young cuckoo just hatching, while a third had a slightly incubated cuckoo’s egg. The two other nests of the _Cisticola_ were unfinished and empty, but on June 1 one of these contained a slightly incubated cuckoo’s egg and three of the foster parent, while, finally, on June 4 the last nest contained a fresh egg of the cuckoo and four of the warbler. As the egg from which the older of the nestling cuckoos had been hatched must have been laid about May 13, while the last egg was laid on June 3 or 4, we have only five eggs laid in 21 days, whereas we know now that the larger cuckoos lay every second day, so the five eggs and the two young found cannot possibly include all then laid. A series of 14 eggs, all found between May 19 and June 10, 1910, in a similar but much larger area, were probably laid between May 16 and June 10 and represent a complete series laid every alternate day. In another small series of five eggs of one and the same cuckoo found in a narrow strip of grassland three eggs were deposited in Cisticola’s nests on May 16, 18, and 20, this exhausting all the nests then available. After this she apparently departed, but on July 5 and 7 the same cuckoo returned and placed two more eggs, one each in two new nests of Cisticolas. Another series of 14 eggs, of which 12 were placed in nests of _Cisticola jundicis cursitans_, one in a nest of _C. exilis tytleri_, and one in a nest of _Suya atrogularis khasiana_, were laid in two periods: The first from May 15 to 23 occupying each of the five nests of the fantail warbler available between these dates, and, then, from June 1 to 18 in all the nests then available in that particular area. Finally a series of eggs of one cuckoo that were taken from 1925 to 1935 consisted of the following numbers: 6, 8, 14, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 14, 11, 15. In 1925 and 1926 woodcutters were working in the pinewoods surrounding the open patch in which the fantail warblers were breeding and doubtless drove these little birds away and so deprived the cuckoo of foster parents during the latter period of her laying, or probably larger series would have been obtained in that particular patch of grassland. The various series prove satisfactorily that eggs are normally deposited every alternate day and, also, that there is no interval in the laying period dividing it into two.

The weights of 1,368 eggs of the Khasia Hills cuckoo are as follows: Average weight 231; maximum 307; minimum 153 milligrams; this latter is, however, an abnormally small light egg and very few will be found less than 180 milligrams.

The same number of eggs measure: Average 23.76 by 17.43; maxima, 28.5 by 18.0 and 27.1 by 20.0; minima 20.9 by 16.3 and 23.4 by 15.0 millimeters.

I should, perhaps, not omit to say that though the generally accepted idea that cuckoos’ eggs can be distinguished by their weight is in most cases correct, it is not always so. For instance, I have 37 eggs of this cuckoo taken in shrikes’ nests, and a comparison of weights and measures of the eggs of the two species is as follows:

_C. c. bakeri, 37 eggs_ _Lanius n. nigriceps, 100 eggs_
Average size: 23.56 by 17.50 mm. 23.60 by 17.9 mm.
Average weight: 232 mg. 215 mg.
Maximum weight: 266 mg. 249 mg.
Minimum weight: 190 mg. 185 mg.

The comparative weight of the eggs of different species of birds varies greatly. Thus _Anthus_ eggs are normally very light while the eggs of _Passer_ are very heavy, two of the former about equaling three of the latter of the same size and, in a few cases, otherwise indistinguishable in coloring, shape, etc. Hoopoes’ and spine-tailed swifts’ eggs are very heavy, far more so in comparison with their size than those of cuckoos.

This shows that weight alone in some cases does not suffice to distinguish cuckoos’ eggs from their fosterers’ eggs, and other comparisons of cuckoos’ eggs with those of other species could be quoted to confirm this. The hard _gritty_ shell with fine pits at wide intervals is a further good distinguishing feature of cuckoos’ eggs, while when blowing it is noticeable that most cuckoos’ eggs have the yolks tinged with flesh color and very pale, while the white is rather more opaque, like the white of a duck’s egg when compared with that of a fowl.

In Europe it is very rare to find two eggs of cuckoos in a nest laid by the same female; in India this is not so rare, and I have on three occasions found three eggs of the same cuckoo in one nest.

It is not possible here to go fully into the fascinating subject of the method of deposition of eggs, but briefly it may be said that it has been fully proved that in many cases cuckoos lay their eggs directly into open nests, an act that has been witnessed by myself, Whitehead, and others in India and proved by Chance (1922) to be the case in England.

There are, however, any number of eggs deposited by cuckoos in nests into which it is utterly impossible for the cuckoo to gain an entrance. Into many of these the cuckoo projects her egg from the cloaca by pressing herself up against the entrance to the nest and ejecting her egg with sufficient force to propel it the 2 or 3 inches that may be necessary for it to reach the nest (Livesey, 1936; A. E. Jones, 1937).

On the other hand, there are many nests to which this method also would not apply, such as nests of small birds, more than 2 or 3 inches inside holes of various character, in some cases a corner having to be turned before the nest is reached. Into these I believe the cuckoo places her egg with her bill, and there is some evidence to support this which I hope to give in my proposed book on “Cuckoo Problems.”

_Young._--Incubation, I think, takes usually 12 or 13 days, rarely only 11 days but occasionally extending to 14. The period the nestling remains in the nest is 4 to 6 weeks, but in many cases the nest is far too small to retain the young cuckoo until it is full grown. Thus when the eggs are deposited in the nests of birds such as _Cisticola_ and, to a lesser degree, _Suya_, the young bird when a quarter grown fills the small egg-shaped nest, sitting in it with its head projecting from the entrance at the top side. Gradually, as the young cuckoo grows, the nest is expanded until it looks like basketwork around it, which finally bursts, depositing him or her on the ground. This generally occurs when the cuckoo has fair feathering and is about half grown or a little later.

The young Khasia Hills cuckoo ejects the fosterer’s eggs or young from the nest in the same way as its English cousin does, possessing the same curious interscapulary pit to assist it in doing so. This structural aid to ejection is found in all such genera as _Cuculus_, _Cacomantis_, _Penthoceryx_, and others that eject their foster brothers and sisters, but not in the young of _Clamator_, _Eudynamis_, and those cuckoos that do not commit such murders. In the cuckoos that possess it, the pit soon fills in and young cuckoos lose the impulse to eject after a very short time, sometimes within 4 days and almost invariably within a week of being hatched.

_Plumages._--Male: Whole upper plumage and wing coverts a dark slaty-gray or blackish slate, decidedly darker than the same parts in the European cuckoo; the lower back, rump, and upper tail coverts are a purer and somewhat lighter gray; the wing quills and concealed portions of greater coverts more brown, the quills slightly glossed and barred with white on the inner webs of the outer primaries, turning to rufous on the inner primaries; tail ashy black tipped with white and with white notches along the sides of the shafts, the white increasing in extent on the lateral tail feathers; chin, throat, sides of head and neck, and the upper breast ashy gray, not so dark as the back; remainder of lower parts, axillaries, and under wing coverts white with rather irregular bands of black, broader and farther apart than in _C. c. canorus_. Under tail coverts the same but with the dark bars still farther apart.

Female: Differs in having a rufous tinge on the upper breast and sometimes on the throat and sides of the neck.

Nestling: Naked when hatched.

Juvenile: First plumage; whole plumage brownish gray or slate, obsoletely barred with buffish white; a patch of white on the nape or hind neck; whole lower plumage barred white or rufescent white and dark brown, very heavily on the chin, throat, and breast, and less so on the under tail coverts.

The young male after the first molt is like the adult but nearly always retains traces of the juvenile barring, more especially so on the wings.

Hepatic females have the whole upper parts barred chestnut and blackish slate or blackish brown; the lower plumage has the chin, throat, and breast barred pale chestnut and blackish and generally with a strong rufous tinge on the breast and abdomen.

Young hepatic females are duller in color than the adults and have the feathers of the upper part fringed with white.

_Colors of soft parts._--Iris pale to deep yellow, sometimes brownish in young birds of the year; bill dark horny brown, or very dark horny green, paler and yellowish at the base and on the commissure and orange-yellow on the gape; legs and feet wax-yellow.

_Measurements._--Wing 220 to 227; tail 155 to 178; tarsus 18 (La Touche) to 19; culmen from feathers of forehead 20 to 22 millimeters (24 La Touche).

_Food._--The principal food of this, as of other cuckoos, consists of caterpillars, pupae, chrysalides, and soft insects of any kind. During flights of termites cuckoos may be seen both catching them on the wing and eating them on the ground as they emerge from it. I have also taken Cicadae from their stomachs, and occasionally quite hard beetles of considerable size.

The actions of this bird when attempting, and indeed succeeding in, the catching of termites in flight are very clumsy and labored and their progress on the ground very slow, similar to the progress of certain woodpeckers when hunting a lawn for ants and other prey.

As a rule they feed in trees at some height from the ground, but any plague of caterpillars will tempt them down to quite low undergrowth or even onto low grass in the open, and I once saw four cuckoos all feeding on small green caterpillars on the ground in an open glade in pine forest.

_Behavior._--Normally cuckoos are seldom found on any but high trees, often resting in one position for a long time on some lofty branch and then flying to another tree with strong, easy beats of the wing, at a considerable speed. In the breeding season the females undoubtedly mark down the nests in which they intend to deposit their eggs, and they may be seen perched in a tree, watching their victims until these latter give away the position of the nest. While thus engaged the patience of the cuckoo seems inexhaustible, and it will sit for hours in one position, hardly moving, yet obviously watching the intended fosterers, which may be loath to return to their nests though they may come and perch on the same tree as that occupied by the cuckoo, sometimes within a few feet of her. Apparently they not only mark down nests for immediate victimization, but others to be made use of when later eggs are to be laid. At other times they seem to be able to ascertain the approximate, yet not the exact, position of a nest. (Livesey MS.) gives me a most interesting example of this. He writes:

“Yesterday, May 19, 1937, I was out for a walk with my wife about 5 p. m. at Taungyi, which has an elevation of some 5,000 feet. Close to my cottage the dogs chased a bird off a ploughed field, which I recognized as a cuckoo. The cuckoo returned with two chats after her and perched on some bamboo rails, so, suspecting that the chats had a nest somewhere near in which the cuckoo was going to lay, I sat down to wait and watch with my glasses. Back came the cuckoo and flew low over the field almost settling on a place some 50 yards in front of us. Twice she flew backward and forward, chased by the chats, finally settling where I expected the nest to be. I could see her very plainly through the glasses as with throat feathers puffed out and crest feathers sometimes raised she jumped clumsily from clod to clod searching for the nest, straining her neck up and looking everywhere. The chats were now mobbing her furiously and in retaliation she only opened her beak and made faces at them. She did not appear to know where the nest was and began a systematic search for it in an area about 5 by 3 yards. The clods in the field were very large and lumpy with all sorts of holes which might have held a nest, and from time to time she disappeared from sight as she hopped into the various depressions, going backward and forward in the most persistent manner, mobbed all the time by the chats.

“She was, I think, a full 10 minutes searching for the nest, but, at last she dipped out of sight and a flutter of her wings suggested she had found the nest and was in the act of laying. She was out of my sight for about 4 seconds and then sped away in a great hurry.

“We climbed the fence and walking up to the place whence she had flown found a very well-concealed chats’ nest in which by stooping down to the ground I could see that the nest contained two eggs, the cuckoo’s and one of the chat’s; by using the tips of my two fingers I was just able to draw the eggs out, one at a time with considerable difficulty.”

_Voice._--The call of the male during the breeding season is exactly the same as that of the European cuckoo, but in winter it also has a single note sounding like _chuck_ softly repeated two or three times. At the beginning of the season the bisyllabic note, from which the bird derives its name, is not perfect and the imperfections cover quite a wide range of variations. Sometimes the note is single instead of double; often it is preceded by a rather hoarse note of the same character as the call, while sometimes the _cuck-oo_ is followed by another hoarser note. The female has the summer bubbling note of its cousin and also certain chuckling notes, very seldom uttered, while in winter it gives vent to the same soft _chucks_ as the male. Whether the female ever calls _cuckoo_ is disputed, but, personally, I am fairly certain that she does, although it may be but seldom. The bubbling note is the call to the male and is also repeated after she has met her mate, but it is then, I think, lower and softer, perhaps an expression of satisfaction.

During the daytime the calling of the male is almost continuous, but that of the female far less so as the former calls in the presence of a female, while the latter does not “bubble” before the male except at the moment she takes to flight and invites him to follow her.

On moonlight nights the male often calls with as much persistency as during the day, but I have never heard it calling on dark nights until dawn is advanced.

_Enemies._--Cuckoos have the usual enemies of all bird life, vermin of every kind, which during the breeding season hunt for and devour all the eggs and young they can find. All the civet-cat tribe, snakes, lizards, and iguanas are inveterate thieves of eggs and young, while even more destructive than these are the birds of the crow and magpie tribe, which systematically hunt out the nests and devour their contents. I have often watched the birds of the genus _Dendrocitta_ and _Cissa_ beating over an area in search of nests, quartering it with the care and energy of a spaniel after game. The young birds suffer also very greatly from being too large for the nests in which they are hatched. Half grown they fall out on to the ground, and many, which escape death from vermin, are killed by exposure to heavy rain.

The older birds seem to have no special enemies, their swift flight and comparatively large size saving them from the sudden death so often the fate of smaller, slower birds. At the same time birds of prey undoubtedly attack and kill them just as they would any other bird of similar size and their superficial resemblance--in human eyes--to a sparrow hawk, would certainly not deceive their would-be destroyers even if these were sparrow hawks. Nor do the small birds attack cuckoos because they _believe_ them to be hawks, but because they _know_ them to be cuckoos and, in their own way as objectionable as hawks.

_Fall._--The Khasia Hills cuckoo is far more sedentary in character than its nearest relations and, possibly, is originally a sedentary race from which the migratory forms have sprung. I have seen the bird in the Khasia Hills in every month of the year except February and, as it is silent in the winter months and does not call attention to its presence, it is probably even more numerous in its breeding range at this time than has hitherto been supposed, while some individuals may be resident in the same locality all the year round. At the same time migration does take place in some degree and this dark race has been found in winter, certainly, in Bengal, more especially in the eastern districts on the Bay, in Orissa, once by Annandale (MS.), while it extends through Burma, south to Prome (Mackenzie and Hopwood, MS.); south Siam (E. G. Herbert, MS.) and finally, almost certainly, to southwestern China. I have no proof that in the Indian Empire adult cuckoos migrate any earlier than the birds of the year. About September the pleasant call, which has been heard continually up to the end of July and casually up to the end of August, ceases entirely, and the birds are also far less frequently seen on the higher ranges of hills and, by October, nearly all the birds, old and young, have left these and have taken to the lower hills and the broken country at their bases, thence slowly and gradually extending into the plains in the districts already mentioned. It is also possible, of course, that this cuckoo may range farther south in winter than stated above, as records of _Cuculus canorus_ (subspecies?) have been recorded from Madras and from the islands of the Austro-Malayan region, between October and March, some of which almost certainly refer to this form. At present, from the evidence at my disposal, I can neither substantiate nor refute this suggestion, as it is quite impossible to recognize one subspecies from another in the field unless a particularly bright light shows up the comparative slaty darkness of this bird, to an observer with some experience of cuckoos.

DISTRIBUTION

Exact details as to the distribution of the Khasia Hills cuckoo are still wanting as so many records of cuckoos refer merely to the species, _Cuculus canorus_, while the subspecies is not given or, indeed, in many cases distinguished. The breeding area has been _proved_ to extend throughout the hills of Assam and Burma as far south as Karen-nee and as far east as Yunnan, while Bangs and Peters (1928) consider it is this form that is found and breeds in eastern Tibet and Szechwan. To the west the breeding cuckoo in the Bhutan Hills is undoubtedly of this race, but how much farther west it may extend is not known though, almost certainly, it may be found breeding in the lower Himalayas below Sikkim. Stevens informs me that he believes it does.

A fine series of breeding specimens in the Stevens collection, collected by him in the Sikkim Hills, indicates that the range of _bakeri_ is below 7,000 or 8,000 feet, and that above that, up to 12,000 feet, _telephonus_ is the breeding form.

In the cold weather it extends to the countries mentioned above in this article as being visited on migration. To these may be added that it occurs in Siam, as far south as Bangkok and the Siamese peninsula west of Tenasserim. Finally, extraordinary as it may seem, it has been recorded by Friedmann (Friedmann and Riley, 1931) as having once been obtained in St. Lawrence Island, Bering Sea, an occurrence that entitles it to a place in the American avifauna. This specimen was originally described as belonging to the central and northeastern Asiatic race _telephonus_, which one might expect would occur at long intervals in Alaska.

Order TROGONIFORMES

Family TROGONIDAE: Trogons

TROGON AMBIGUUS AMBIGUUS Gould

COPPERY-TAILED TROGON

HABITS

This gorgeous Mexican species brings color from the Tropics, all too rarely, across our borders in extreme southern Texas and southern Arizona. Ever since Lieutenant Benson shot an immature male in the Huachuca Mountains on August 24, 1885, it has been known to occur there and in other neighboring localities in Arizona as one of our rarest birds. Specimens have been taken there under circumstances that would indicate that sometime its nest will be found within our borders. An adult female was shot by F. H. Fowler (1903) in the Huachucas during August 1892. Major Bendire (1895) writes: “Another adult female, which evidently had a nest close by, was obtained by Dr. Edgar A. Mearns, United States Army, on June 23, 1892, on the east side of the San Luis Mountains, close to the Mexican boundary line. The long tail feathers in this specimen are much worn and abraded, and look as if the bird had passed considerable time in very limited quarters. Its mate was also seen, but not secured. Judging from the character of the country this species inhabits in southern Arizona, that is pine forest regions, it is probably only a straggler, in the lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas, and does not breed there.”

Mrs. Florence M. Bailey (1923) reports that A. B. Howell discovered a pair of these trogons in the Santa Rita Mountains in southern Arizona in 1918, of which he writes: “While wrapping two birds which I had shot at 6,000 feet in a canyon, on August 4, I looked up and saw a pair of these birds watching me from live oak branches at perhaps a hundred yards. I had an unobstructed view of their bright underparts and characteristic form and flight, and identification was sure. They were very ‘wise,’ and as I carefully approached, they as slowly receded, flying from oak to oak until they separated and I lost them in the denser growth. The trees were almost entirely live oaks here with a very occasional pine.”

Herbert W. Brandt has sent me the following notes on the status of this beautiful bird on the western slopes of the Huachuca Mountains, Ariz.: “The turkeylike call of this rare, semitropical visitor is a common bird note in Sunnyside Canyon and in the lower reaches of Bear Canyon. There are at least three pairs of birds in each of these valleys; and in the morning they noisily call back and forth to one another. These valley floors are usually densely wooded and would make this bird difficult to study were it not for its inquisitive nature, for it is usually easily lured by the ‘squeech.’ One lavishly garbed male and his more modest mate repeatedly allowed me to walk up to within about 20 feet of them before they would fly a short distance and then allow me to approach them again. Each time they both called their hen-turkey-like notes, _kum-kum-kum_, ever answering my squeeches of a like count and inflection. That this bird breeds in the vicinity there is little doubt, but we did not spend time seeking its home, as Arizona has wisely put it on the permanently protected list, and in consequence this mountain-loving species is becoming common again in its densely tangled retreats.”

A. J. van Rossem (1936) adds the following news:

Regardless of its status in former years, this trogon may
now be counted a fairly common summer visitant in the Santa
Ritas. Possibly it has always been more numerous than was
supposed, for one of the rangers, who has been stationed
for many years in the Santa Ritas, knew the bird well and
told me of having seen as many as five or six feeding
together at a single patch of manzanita. At any rate there
were several pairs in Madera Cañon in the summers of 1931
and 1932. * * *

On June 27 [1931], Mr. Gorsuch and I saw or heard eight
birds between the forks of the cañon at 6000 feet, and
Littleshot Cabin at 7000. On that date a fully adult
male was collected by Mr. Gorsuch for the museum at the
University of Arizona. On June 28, a very young trogon,
about two-thirds grown and evidently just out of the nest,
was shot, quite unintentionally, in a patch of oaks at 6000
feet.

At least two pairs were noted on May 30, 1931; “the association in which they were noted was the oak-sycamore growth near the juncture of Upper Sonoran and Transition. Two males (both of which presumably had mates) were heard in the left (north) fork--one at 7000, the other at 8000 feet altitude. These altitudes are in the pine-oak association in the Transition Zone.”

Col. A. J. Grayson (Lawrence, 1874) says that, in western Mexico, “it is to be met with only in the dark forests of the _tierra caliente_.”

_Nesting._--Colonel Grayson says that “it breeds in the hollows of trees like the parrots.” According to Mrs. Bailey (1928), the nest is “reported in cavities in large trees, generally in large deserted woodpecker holes, but also in holes in banks.” There are ten sets of eggs of the coppery-tailed trogon in the Thayer collection in Cambridge, all collected by, or for, Frank B. Armstrong near Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, Mexico, between March 29 and April 27, 1908. If these dates are all correctly recorded, these trogons must breed very plentifully in that region, or Mr. Armstrong’s collectors must have been very industrious. There are a number of sets in other collections from the same locality, all taken by the same collectors. These eggs were all taken from nests in holes in trees, apparently natural cavities; the holes were at various heights, ranging from 12 to 40 feet above the ground; some of the trees were in a river bottom and others in “big woods near town.” The nests were made of various materials, such as hay, straw, trash, moss, wool, down, feathers, vines, and thistledown.

_Eggs._--The coppery-tailed trogon lays ordinarily three or four eggs but probably sometimes only two. These are rounded-ovate to nearly oval in shape; and the shell is smooth but not glossy. The color is dull white or faintly bluish white and entirely unmarked. The measurements of 55 eggs average 28.50 by 23.18 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =30.7= by 24.6, 29 by =25=, =26= by 22.8, and 29.5 by =22.1= millimeters.

_Plumages._--I have not seen any nestlings or very young birds. Ridgway (1911) gives very full and accurate descriptions of all the known plumages of both sexes of this trogon; but his accounts are too long to be quoted in full here, so I shall mention only the most conspicuous features of the different plumages, by which the reader may recognize them.

In the juvenal plumage, in July, the sexes are alike, or nearly so, and closely resemble, on the upper parts, the adult female, except that the central pair of tail feathers have very narrow black tips, instead of broad ones; the next three pairs of rectrices are black, and the two lateral pairs are mostly white, barred with black, except for a large terminal white area; the lesser, median, and to a lesser degree the greater wing coverts are tipped with a large spot of pale buff or buffy white, bordered with black; chin and throat grayish brown above a quite distinct white pectoral band; below this band the under parts are indistinctly barred, or mottled, with grayish brown and grayish white.

This unadulterated juvenal plumage is apparently worn through the first summer and early fall; I have seen it in its purity in birds collected at various dates between July 23 and September 20; but, on the other hand, some specimens show the beginning of a molt before the end of August. During all the remainder of their first year, young birds show more or less continuous progress toward maturity by a gradual and irregular molt. At an early age, between August and November, young males begin to show metallic green feathers in the back and throat, and metallic blue feathers in the rump and upper tail coverts; during winter and spring these metallic colors gradually increase; and on the under parts, below the white band, there is a gradual decrease in the brown and white and a corresponding increase in the “geranium red” of the adult plumage. At the same time, young females are acquiring more and more of the “peach red” of the adult female on the posterior under parts.

These transition plumages may be seen, in the series I have studied, in birds collected in November, December, February, March, April, May, June, and July, during all of which time the juvenal wings and tail are retained. From this I infer that the annual molt occurs in summer and fall and that young birds do not acquire the fully adult plumage until they are at least 15 months old, or perhaps much older.

_Food._--Some coppery-tailed trogons that E. C. Jacot collected for me were feeding on wild grapes. Dr. A. K. Fisher wrote to Major Bendire (1895) that “a rancher who raises fruit in Ramsay Canyon stated that the species visited the gardens in considerable numbers, especially during the period when cherries were ripe.” Major Bendire (1895) says of other members of the trogon family: “Their food consists of fruit, grasshoppers, and other insects, and in their actions while catching the latter they are said to resemble a Flycatcher, starting and returning from a perch like these birds, and often sitting for hours in the same place.”

Cottam and Knappen (1939) state that a bird, collected by Dr. Fisher in the Huachuca Mountains in June, “had fed exclusively on the adults and larvae of lepidopterous insects.” They examined the stomach of another bird, collected in October in Mexico, that contained 68 percent insects and 32 percent fruits. The insect food included one grasshopper nymph, long-horned grasshopper eggs, three Mantidae, three stink bugs, other Heteroptera, one leaf beetle, one very large larva of a hawk moth, larvae of undetermined Lepidoptera, and two sawfly larvae. The vegetable food consisted of fruits of cut-leaved cissus, fruit of red pepper, and undetermined plant fiber.

_Behavior._--F. H. Fowler (1903) writes:

On June 9, 1892, my father and I accompanied Dr. A. K.
Fisher to Garden Canyon seven miles south of the post.
We reached the canyon and were riding up the narrow
trail bordered with pines and live oaks, when suddenly a
beautiful male trogon flew across the path just ahead of
us, and perched on a live oak bush on the other side of the
small stream which flows through the canyon. The Doctor
tried to approach it, but the noise caused by his passage
through the thick brush and over the sliding rocks on the
hill side alarmed the bird, which from the first had seemed
a trifle uneasy, and it was soon lost to view among the
trees down the canyon. Higher up among the pines, on the
same day, we heard the calls of another which sounded much
like those of a hen turkey. While we were eating lunch
on the way down, we heard still another calling from the
hillside above us, and the Doctor, who found it perched
on the lower limb of a pine after a short search, watched
its actions for a few moments and then shot at it. It sat
erect, the tail hanging straight down, and when uttering
the call threw its head back until its beak pointed nearly
straight up.

On August 14 of the same year I again found the trogon in
Garden Canyon, this time higher up however at the Picture
Rocks. A beautiful pair flew up from a fallen pine to the
lower limb of a tree, and sat there quietly watching me. I
dismounted and fired a reduced charge at the male, but the
only effect was that he flew off through the trees unhurt,
while the female flew up to a small tree on the hill, where
she sat, looking at me until I loaded my gun, when I shot
her. At the second shot the male flew up the canyon his
beautiful carmine breast gleaming in the sunlight like a
streak of flame. Both birds sat nearly erect when at rest,
with their long tails hanging nearly straight down. Their
flight was nearly like the slow flight of a magpie, until
startled, when they flew like a dove and nearly as fast.

_Voice._--Mr. Jacot says, in his letter, that the young birds were silent but that the adults had many notes, one of which was “almost like the chattering of our gray squirrel.” A note referred to above was like that of a hen turkey. Dr. William Beebe (1905) says: “The call of the trogon, uttered especially toward evening when it came to drink, was a soft series of melodious notes, reminding one somewhat of the content-call of a hen with chickens. Regularly at dusk two of these birds went to roost in a dense tangle of wild clematis.” Mr. van Rossem (1936) refers to the note of the male trogon as a “loud, hoarse, ‘kóa-kóa-kóa’.” Evidently the bird has a variety of notes.

_Field marks._--The shape and posture, referred to above, as well as its brilliant colors, would mark this beautiful bird definitely as a trogon. The only other trogon likely to be met with anywhere within the range of this species is the Mexican trogon, found on the highlands of Mexico. The two species can be recognized in life by the color patterns of the outer tail feathers; in _ambiguus_ these feathers are largely white, barred or vermiculated with black; in _mexicanus_ they are largely black, broadly tipped with white.

DISTRIBUTION

_Range._--Southern Arizona, south to central Mexico; accidental in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

The range of the coppery-tailed trogon extends =north= casually to Arizona (possibly Santa Catalina Mountains, Huachuca Mountains, and possibly Tombstone); northern Chihuahua (San Luis Mountains and the Sierra de la Campana); Nuevo Leon (Monterey and Montemorelos); and central Tamaulipas (Ciudad Victoria and Soto la Marina). =East= to Tamaulipas (Soto la Marina, Xicotencatl, Altamira, and Tampico); central Veracruz (Orizaba); and central Oaxaca (Talca and Juchatengo). =South= to Oaxaca (Juchatengo); Oaxaca (Omilteme and Amula); Michoacan (Tancitaro); and Jalisco (Zapotlan). =West= to Jalisco (Zapotlan, Ameca, and San Marcos); Nayarit (Mazatlan, Tres Marias Islands, and Mexcatitlan); Sinaloa (Escuinapa, El Limon, Angostura, and San Javier); eastern Sonora (Alamos, Chinobampo, and Guiracoba); and southeastern Arizona (Huachuca Mountains and possibly the Santa Catalina Mountains).

_Casual records._--Although this bird can only be considered as rare anywhere in the United States, it appears to be fairly regular in the Huachuca Mountains, Ariz. During the summer of 1877 a trogon was killed near Ringgold Barracks and another at Las Cuevas, Tex. Although not preserved they were fully described, by the persons who shot them, to Dr. James C. Merrill, and were undoubtedly this species.

_Egg dates._--Mexico: 23 records, March 29 to June 30; 12 records, April 15 to May 13, indicating the height of the season.

Order CORACIIFORMES

Family ALCEDINIDAE: Kingfishers

MEGACERYLE ALCYON ALCYON (Linnaeus)

EASTERN BELTED KINGFISHER

PLATES 12–14

HABITS

Our North American representative of the large and interesting kingfisher family is not so gaudily colored as some of the foreign species and is intermediate in size between the largest and the smallest members of the family, but it is an interesting bird, striking in appearance and voice, and unique in form. Its long, heavy bill and its large head with its prominent crest, contrasting with its diminutive feet and its short tail, seem entirely out of balance and give it a top-heavy appearance. But its peculiar proportions and structure are beautifully adapted for the life it leads; its large beak and head form an effective spearhead for use in its deep plunges, and they are well built to stand the shocks of frequent diving. Unlike the osprey, it does not need to use its feet in fishing; but the short legs and shovellike feet are most useful in shoveling the loose soil from its nesting burrows, after it has been loosened by the powerful beak.

The belted kingfisher, as a species, covers nearly all the North American Continent, breeding from northern Alaska and central Labrador southward to the southern border of the United States. Being essentially a fish-eating bird, its haunts are naturally near large or small bodies of water. It is common on the seacoast and estuaries, where it may be seen perched on some stake or pier, watching for its prey; or along the shore of a lake or pond, its favorite outlook may be the branch of a tree overhanging the water; I believe that it prefers to perch on a dead or leafless branch, where its view is unobstructed. Trout brooks, especially swift and rocky mountain streams, are favorite resorts, where its loud, rattling cry is often heard, as it flies up and down, patrolling its chosen fishing ground and driving away any intruders of its own species; it prefers to play the role of the lone fisherman.

_Courtship._--Very little seems to be known about the kingfisher’s courtship. Laurence B. Potter says in his notes: “Sometimes I have watched as many as five or six high up in the air, tumbling and wheeling about, uttering their harsh rattle; they appear to be doing it merely for the joy of flying, or it may be their courtship antics.” Francis H. Allen writes to me: “From courting birds--a group of them--I have heard a mewing note uttered in rapid succession, almost if not quite as loud as the familiar rattle of the species. These same birds--or two of them at least--also kept up a continual, prolonged rattle.”

_Nesting._--The nest of the belted kingfisher is almost invariably in a burrow in a sandy, clay, or gravelly bank, excavated by the birds themselves. The site chosen is preferably near water and as near the favorite fishing grounds of the birds as a suitable bank can be found. But such banks are not always to be found in the most convenient places, so the birds are forced to nest in any bank they can find, often at a long distance from any water, such as the embankment of a railroad cut, the cliff of a sand dune, or a bank by a roadside where sand or gravel has been taken out for grading. On Cape Cod, the sandpits made while sanding cranberry bogs are favorite sites. The burrow may be at any height from the base of the cliff, depending on the height of the cliff, but it is usually not more than 2 or 3 feet from the top, though Major Bendire (1895) says that it is sometimes as much as 20 feet below the top of the cliff. The burrow extends inward, sloping slightly upward, for varying distances, usually from 3 to 6 feet, but sometimes as much as 10 or even 15 feet; as kingfishers sometimes use the same burrow for several years in succession, it may be that the deepest burrows are the oldest and have been extended from year to year to provide a fresh, clean nest. The burrow is usually straight, or nearly so, but often it curves somewhat, or makes a more or less abrupt turn to the right or left. One that I dug out ran straight in for 3 feet, made an abrupt turn to the left, and then made a reverse curve, so that the nest was only about 2 feet from the face of the cliff. The entrance and the tunnel itself are not quite circular, being usually about 3½ to 4 inches wide and 3 to 3½ inches high; an occupied burrow can generally be recognized by the footmarks of the bird, a central ridge with a furrow on each side of it, made by the bird as it enters or leaves the nest. The nest is placed in an enlarged chamber, which may be directly at the end of the tunnel, or a little to one side of it, and usually a little above the level of the tunnel. The chamber varies considerably in size and shape but is approximately circular and dome-shaped; it is usually 10 to 12 inches in diameter and 6 to 7 inches in height. Often the eggs are laid on the bare sand or gravel which probably indicates that the nest is a new one, or that the eggs are fresh; oftener, perhaps, the nesting chamber is lined with bits of clean, white fish bones, fish scales, or fragments of the shells of crustaceans; these, I believe, are the remains of ejected pellets and indicate that the nest has been previously occupied by young birds or that the female has been fed on the nest for some time; there is no evidence to indicate that the birds ever bring in such material intentionally.

Bendire (1895) writes:

The time required to dig out a burrow depends largely on
the nature of the soil to be removed, taking sometimes two
or three weeks, but generally much less. I have personally
seen an instance where a pair of these birds excavated a
new burrow in a rather friable clay bank near Fort Lapwai,
Idaho, to a depth of 5 feet (estimated measurement) in a
little over three days. How they managed to dig so rapidly,
considering their short and weak-looking feet, with which
they must remove the greater part of the material, has
always been a mystery to me, and I would not believe them
capable of accomplishing such an amount of work had I not
seen it done. When not disturbed the same nesting site is
resorted to from year to year. Sometimes the male burrows
an additional hole near the occupied nesting site, usually
not over 3 feet deep, to which it retires to feed and to
pass the night.

Dr. Thomas S. Roberts (1932) published the following account on the authority of Miss Frances Densmore, of Red Wing, Minn.:

On April 25, 1928, I found a pair of Kingfishers digging
their tunnel at the top of a high cut about a foot below
the surface, just where the black loam met the under sand,
some one hundred feet, or thereabouts, above the water.
They both dug, taking turn and turn about, except when she
thought he hadn’t stayed in long enough and sent him back.
After watching them for an hour or more I formed a theory
as to how they managed it. One would go in and work for two
or three minutes and then push the dirt ahead of it to the
entrance and fly out over it. No dirt ever came out with
the bird that had been digging, but when the other went
in there was a veritable fountain spurting out for nearly
a minute after it entered. Then this subsided and more
digging was done by the bird that had cleared the hole.
They kept very close to their schedule of two or three
minutes each. On this day the dirt they brought out was
sand, but on the 27th it was black loam from above, and I
decided that they had got back to their “sitting room.” On
May 1 they weren’t working and, as both were in and out at
the same time, I judged that there was room to turn and
that they would call it done.

Dr. A. K. Fisher wrote to Major Bendire (1895) as follows:

On June 6, 1882, the writer found two nests of the
Kingfisher in the side of a railroad cut near Croton Lake,
Westchester County, New York. The burrows were placed in a
bank not over 7 feet above the roadbed and within 18 inches
of the top. That of the first one ran in about 7 feet and
turned to the right as it entered the nesting chamber. The
seven fresh eggs were placed in a nest of coarse grass,
which, although rather scanty, covered the floor of the
cavity on all sides. The burrow of the second one extended
in about 4½ feet, and, like the other previously mentioned,
turned toward the right as the expanded nesting cavity was
reached. The nest, which was quite elaborate, was composed
wholly of fish scales and bones, arranged in a compact,
saucer-shaped mass. The writer made a tunnel from the top
of the bank so as to intercept the burrow as it entered
the nesting cavity. Viewed through this hole, the nest was
a beautiful affair. The scales, which looked as if made
of frosted silver, formed a delicate setting for the six
pure-white eggs lying in the center, and by the projected
light made a most effective picture. On two occasions,
near Sing Sing, New York, the writer found the Kingfisher
and Rough-winged Swallow using burrows having a common
entrance. It is probable in each case that the swallow
had commenced its diverging burrow after the larger bird
completed its work.

A few cases have been recorded of the kingfisher nesting in other cavities, where suitable sandbanks were not available. Mr. Forbush (1927) says: “Mr. Herbert F. Moulton of Ware, Massachusetts, tells me that he found a kingfisher’s nest in a plowed field on a hillside. The entrance was made in a ‘dead furrow.’” Arthur H. Howell (1932) says: “Baynard (1913) writes that in Alachua County [Florida] the Kingfisher nests early in April in holes in dead trees or stubs over water. He states, also (verbally), that he once found a nest at Clearwater, 4 feet above water in a leaning stub, the entrance hole being on the under side; this nest contained 4 eggs on May 6.”

Beyer, Allison, and Kopman (1908), referring to Louisiana, say:

The character of the nest varies greatly with different
conditions of soil. On the coast it is content with such
elevations as can be found on the shores, and the burrow
is sometimes scarcely more than a pocket in the clayey
banks; in the upper districts, the site is often far from
water, and the soft, coarse-grained soil renders easy the
excavation of a burrow five or six feet deep, enlarged at
the end, and often partly lined with leaves and pine straw;
and finally, a unique condition exists in the extensive
gum-swamps in the lake region of the southeast, where the
land--always submerged--is perfectly flat, and nothing
stands above water except innumerable trees and stumps of
Nyssa; the nest is placed in the top of a decaying stump,
with no attempt at excavation.

But tree-nesting is not wholly confined to the southern swamps, for Dr. George M. Sutton (1928) writes: