OCR Text |
Show 1873.] OF THE ETHIOPIAN REGION. 585 the back, some of the greater ones slightly inclining to brownish, with a narrow white margin ; a conspicuous patch of white feathers along the edge of the wing; quills brownish, washed externally with grey, the secondaries much darker on the inner web, where they are slightly glossed with greenish and narrowly margined with white; the inner webs of all the feathers white at the base, this colour extending uninterruptedly for nearly half the feather, and broken towards its apical extent by a few more or less interrupted bars of greyish brown ; tail greyish brown, with a decided wash of clearer grey on the outer web, all the feathers tipped with white, the outer ones very broadly, with a distinct blackish bar crossing the tail just before the white tip, the centre feathers longitudinally spotted with white along the shaft, these spots increasing in size towards the outer feathers, which are also notched with white on the inner web, till on the outermost they form very distinct white bars across the feathers ; sides of the face of the same colour as the head; lores, feathers in front of the eye, fore part of cheeks, and entire throat pale bluish grey; lower part of throat and fore neck bright chestnut; rest of under surface buff, strongly shaded with chestnut and crossed with very narrow blackish lines ; under tail-coverts uniform rich buff; under wing-coverts buff, with very narrow blackish vermiculations; bill rich orange, blackish along the culmen and towards the tip of both mandibles; feet deep yellow. Total length 13*4 inches, culmen 1*05, wing 8*7, tail 7*0, tarsus 0*95. Hab. River Gambia (Mus. R. B. S.) ; Casamanze (Verreaux). To the same extent that Cuculus gularis differs from C. canorus does this new bird differ from C. gularis. It might be supposed that a new Cuckoo of this group, coming as it does from Sene-gambia, must be the true C. lineatus of Swainson; but neither his description nor figure agrees at all; and there can be no doubt that, as in the case of Oriolus capensis and other birds, he has figured a South-African specimen, and that the species has no business in the list of West-African birds. Like O. gularis, the Gambian Cuckoo has the nostrils situated in, and of the same colour as, the yellow portion of the beak; but this is much more brilliantly coloured; hence the name suggested. The chestnut shade on the under parts is another character; while the cross bars on the under surface are very much narrower than in true 0. gularis. It is just possible that C. aurantiirostris may turn out to be the C. ruficollis of Heuglin, or C. leptodetus oi Cabanis and Heine, from North-eastern Africa; and a comparison of types is desirable. The two latter are united without a query to G. gularis by von Heuglin. On the other hand, the bird noticed by Hartlaub from Casamanze is clearly C. aurantiirostris, so that it is by no means improbable that Senegambia has its peculiar species of Cuckoo. 6. CUCULUS GULARIS. Le Coucou vulgaire d'Afrique, Levaill. Ois. d'Afr. v. pis. 200, 201 (1806) ; Sundev. Crit. o m Levaill. p. 47 (1858). Cuculus gularis, Steph. Gen. Zool. ix. pt. 1, p. 83, pl. 17 (1815, |