Coccystes coromandus (Linu.). 
The Crested Red - winged Cuckoo.

Coccystes coromandus (Linn.), Jerd. B. hid. i, p. 341; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 213.

An egg that I possess of the Crested Red - winged Cuckoo was obtained for me by my friend, the late Mr. Irwin, in Tipperah. It was extracted from the oviduct of the female. In shape it is a very broad oval, and in texture fine and glossy. In colour it is a moderately pale, somewhat greenish blue, uniform throughout, without any specks or spots; although considerably larger, it in other respects closely resembles some eggs of C. jacobinus.

It measures 1.05 by 0.92 inch.   

Mr. Mandelli sent me a nest in which he says that four fresh eggs of this species were found oh the 20th May, at Namtchu in Native Sikhim. It was placed on the branches of a very large tree at a height of twenty - five feet from the ground. A fifth egg was extracted from the oviduct of the parent - bird. All the five eggs are precisely alike, and like others that I have myself extracted from the oviduct of this species. I cannot, however, for a moment believe that the nest really belonged to this Cuckoo. She was shot on it no doubt when about to lay the fifth egg, having selected the nest of some bird, probably some Babbler, whose eggs closely resemble her own. The nest is a moderately deep cup four inches in diameter, composed externally of dry leaves loosely bound together with coarse grass, and lined with fine wire - like twigs, flower - stems, as I guess, of some herbaceous plant. The nest is very similar to some I have seen of Garrulax moniliger, and again of G. leucolophus.

Captain Feilden remarks : -"This bird is the commonest Cuckoo at Thayetmyo; in the thicker parts of the jungle every bamboo - filled valley contains one or more pairs. They arrive in the beginning of the rains, and the young birds do not leave till October. They lay in the nest of the Quaker Thrushes I believe, as I have frequently shot the young bird from the middle of a brood of young Quaker Thrushes, and, as far as I could see from the thickness of the jungle, the old Thrushes were feeding the young Cuckoo. An egg, taken from the nest of a Quaker Thrush, that I believe to have belonged to this bird was very round and a pale blue. I believe that this bird keeps some kind of watch over its eggs, as a pair have sometimes seated themselves near me uttering a harsh, grating, whistling scream very unlike their usual magpie - like chatter,' and I afterwards found a young Cuckoo in company with a flock of Thrushes that were constantly to be found in that bamboo clump."

Mr. J. Darling, Jun., says  : -" Shot a hen at Kaukarit in Tenasserim, with a fully formed unshelled egg in the oviduct. No nest was to be seen anywhere about."