(YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO.)
+Coccyzus americanus+, _Scl. et Salv. Nomencl._ p. 108; _Sclater, P.
Z. S._ 1872, p. 490 (Buenos Ayres); _Withington, Ibis_, 1888, p.
468 (Lomas de Zamora).
_Description._--Above grey; ear-coverts blackish; wings in interior
rufous, which shows more or less externally: beneath white, greyish
on the throat; tail-feathers, except the two central which are like
the back, black broadly tipped with white; bill with the lower
mandible orange-yellow, except at the tip: whole length 12·0 inches,
wing 5·7, tail 5·7. _Female_ similar.
_Hab._ North and Central America and Colombia; occasional in Brazil and
Argentina.
This is a well-known inhabitant of the United States, where it is a
regular summer visitant, passing the winter months in Central America
and the West Indies, and being also occasionally met with during this
season in Brazil. In the Argentine Republic it is very rare, and the few
specimens found were all seen late in the autumn, after other summer
visitors had left. I can only account for the lateness of these birds on
the supposition that, being low fliers, excessively shy, and eminently
forest birds, they shrunk from traversing the wide open plains which
offer no kind of shelter or protection, and so remained in the isolated
plantations which rise like little islands of greenery in the sea-like
level of the pampas.