_May-bird._
_Coccyzus Americanus._
_Cuculus Americanus_, +Linn.+—Aud. pl. 2.
_Cuculus Carolinensis_, +Wils.+
_Coccyzus Americanus_, +Vieill.+
_Erythrophrys Americanus_, +Sw.+
[82] Length 13 inches, expanse 16¹⁄₂, flexure 5⁴⁄₁₀, tail 5¹⁄₂,
rictus 1²⁄₁₀, tarsus 1, middle toe 1.
All our Cuckoos but the present are permanent residents; this is but a
summer visitor. Nor is it at any time very common, a few only taking
up their abode with us, while their brethren continue their vernal
migration from the southern to the northern continent. In the “Notes
of a Year,” before quoted, Mr. Hill has the following observations on
this species. “The visit of the May-bird is one of the precursors of
the spring rains in this island. The hazy atmosphere which precedes
the showers of the vernal season, has already dimmed the usual lustre
of the sky; the winds have ceased; the heat has begun to be irritably
oppressive; the air to assume a steamy denseness, hot and heavy; the
butterflies have left the parched and blighted pastures to congregate
wherever they can find any kind of moisture, and the insects to attract
the Nightjars to the lowlands, when the stuttering voice of this
Yellow-billed Cuckoo is heard among the prognostics of the coming rain.
“The May-bird, unlike the other Cuckoos with us, that never migrate,
prefers straggling trees by the wayside to hedgerow thickets. With
the first rain that falls, the hedge-trees, cleared of their dust,
have begun to put forth fresh foliage, and to form those closer
bowers favourable to the shy and solitary habits of this bird. It is
[comparatively] long-winged, and its swift arrowy flight might be
mistaken for that of some of the wild-pigeons. It ranges excursively,
and flies horizontally with a noiseless speed, dropping on the
topmost stems of trees, or descending into the middlemost branches.
When alighting, it betrays its presence by a sound like the drawling
_cuck-cuck-cuck_ of a sauntering barn-door fowl.”
One which was slightly wounded, on being put into a cage with some
Pea-doves, began to attack them by munching out their feathers. It
was therefore placed by itself, when it sat moody and motionless;
attempting occasionally, however, to seize cockroaches which were put
in to it, and biting spitefully at the hand when approached.
In skinning this bird, an operation very difficult from the tenderness
of the skin, my attention was called to a number of Entozoa, which were
writhing about on the surface of the sclerotica of the eyes, within
the orbit. They were very active, about half an inch long, and as
thick as a horse-hair. Under a lens, they appeared whitish, pellucid,
cylindrical, but tapered at each end; the intestinal canal distinctly
visible, much corrugated and in motion. There were traces of transverse
wrinkles. Sam informed me that he had observed them once before in the
eyes of the same species.