(_Coccyzus erythrophthalmus_) Cuckoo family
_Called also_: RAIN CROW
_Length_--11 to 12 inches. About one-fifth larger than the
robin
_Male_--Grayish brown above, with bronze tint in feathers.
Underneath grayish white; bill, which is long as head and
black, arched and acute. Skin about the eye bright red. Tail
long, and with spots on tips of quills that are small and
inconspicuous.
_Female_--Has obscure dusky bars on the tail.
_Range_--Labrador to Panama; westward to Rocky Mountains.
_Migrations_--May. September. Summer resident.
"O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird?
Or but a wandering voice?"
From the tangled shrubbery on the hillside back of Dove Cottage,
Keswick, where Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy listened for the
coming of this "darling of the spring"; in the willows overhanging
Shakespeare's Avon; from the favorite haunts of Chaucer and Spenser,
where
"Runneth meade and springeth blede,"
we hear the cuckoo calling; but how many on this side of the Atlantic
are familiar with its American counterpart? Here, too, the cuckoo
delights in running water and damp, cloudy weather like that of an
English spring; it haunts the willows by our river-sides, where as yet
no "immortal bard" arises to give it fame. It "loud sings" in our
shrubbery, too. Indeed, if we cannot study our bird afield, the next
best place to become acquainted with it is in the pages of the English
poets. But due allowance must be made for differences of temperament.
Our cuckoo is scarcely a "merry harbinger"; his talents, such as they
are, certainly are not musical. However, the guttural cluck is not
discordant, and the black-billed species, at least, has a soft, mellow
voice that seems to indicate an embryonic songster. "_K-k-k-k,
kow-kow-ow-kow-ow!_" is a familiar sound in many localities, but the
large, slim, pigeon-shaped, brownish-olive bird that makes it,
securely hidden in the low trees and shrubs that are its haunts, is
not often personally known. Catching a glimpse only of the
grayish-white under parts from where we stand looking up into the tree
at it, it is quite impossible to tell the bird from the yellow-billed
species. When, as it flies about, we are able to note the red circles
about its eyes, its black bill, and the absence of black tail
feathers, with their white "thumb-nail" spots, and see no bright
cinnamon feathers on the wings (the yellow-billed specie's
distinguishing marks), we can at last claim acquaintance with the
black-billed cuckoo. Our two common cuckoos are so nearly alike that
they are constantly confused in the popular mind and very often in the
writings of ornithologists. At first glance the birds look alike.
Their haunts are almost identical; their habits are the same; and, as
they usually keep well out of sight, it is not surprising if confusion
arise.
Neither cuckoo knows how to build a proper home; a bunch of sticks
dropped carelessly into the bush, where the hapless babies that emerge
from the greenish eggs will not have far to fall when they tumble out
of bed, as they must inevitably do, may by courtesy only be called a
nest. The cuckoo is said to suck the eggs of other birds; but, surely,
such vice is only the rarest dissipation. Insects of many kinds and
"tent caterpillars" chiefly are their chosen food.