Manus Brush Cuckoo

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Diagnosis: main song of one type, elements long and flattened and rather slow-paced (n = 2, Fig. 2); basic morph of Admiralties morphotype (see 3.2.2. (4) above); body small and tail proportionally mid-length: wing c. 106 – 115 mm, tail / wing ratio 0.96 – 1.02 (Table 2); barred females with dorsa dully barred dusky on greyish cinnamon, and ventral white distinct, barred discretely black without cinnamon wash; juveniles intermediate in depth of tones and density of markings, but whiter ventrally than in other differentiates (n = 1). Element shape of song notes is unique except for those in the Solomon differentiate C. addendus (Fig. 2; see below). The bill is also distinctively broad, and this, together with tail proportions, are shared with Bismarck populations and arguably indicative of its derivation (Table 2; also Mayr & Diamond 2001: 235). The greyer dorsum and sharply demarcated grey-and-rufous ventral surface in C. blandus are also unique in the complex, resembling east Asian C. merulinus and leading Rothschild & Hartert (1914 b) to query affinities. White barring in outer rectrices, however, is altogether different — fine teeth in blandus and complete diagonal bars in merulinus. So is the main song, which in merulinus is sepulcralis - like except for falling away in a bubbled jumble of notes at the end. C. blandus has been treated as a subspecies of variolosus by all reviewers since Hartert (1925), based on morphology alone; and its respective phenotypic and vocal similarities to merulinus and Solomon addendus could be either convergent or retained ancestral traits.