It is not improbable that Vigors’s name will have to be used for the violet cuckoo inhabiting the Philippine Islands, outside the Palawan group; at the present time, however, sufficient material to warrant the separation is not available.
339. CHALCOCOCCYX MALAYANUS (Raffles).
EMERALD CUCKOO.
- Cuculus malayanus Raffles, Trans. Linn. Soc. (1822), 13, pt. 2, 286.
- Chalcococcyx malayanus Shelley, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. (1891), 19, 298; Sharpe, Hand-List (1900), 2, 162; McGregor and Worcester, Hand-List (1906), 62.
Basilan (McGregor); Bongao (Everett); Mindanao (Everett, Celestino); Negros (Steere); Tawi Tawi (Everett). Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Timor, Flores, Celebes, New Guinea, Solomon Islands, northern Australia.
Adult female.—Above including wing and tail dark metallic bronze-green, mixed with dark purple, the latter color more pronounced on head and neck; some small white spots on lores and above and below eyes; below white, barred with coppery bronze; throat, fore breast, and sides of neck heavily washed with rich rusty brown which nearly obliterates the white and bronze bars; under wing-coverts and axillars barred with white and bronze; under surface of wing ashy brown; on inner web near the base of each quill a white patch, followed by a larger rufous patch forming a diagonal double band; rectrices rufous, outermost pair barred with black and white and with white tips; next two pairs barred with black and with white tips; fourth pair ashy brown, barred with rufous on outer webs and with tips subterminally blackish; middle pair ashy brown with obsolete subterminal bars. Iris red; bill black, dark red at base; feet dark green. Length, 160; wing, 99; tail, 66; culmen from base, 16; bill from nostril, 12. The specimen described above was taken in Basilan. Male similar?
“Bill blackish; iris burnt sienna color; orbital ring fine vermilion; feet very dark lead-gray.” (Everett.)
Genus EUDYNAMYS Vigors and Horsfield, 1826.
Adult male entirely black; adult female conspicuously barred and spotted; feet stout; tail long, its feathers broad and rounded at their tips.