CUCKOO AND KINGFISHER
Yellow-billed Cuckoo
Black-billed Cuckoo
Belted Kingfisher
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YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
_Called also: Rain Crow_
Do you own a cuckoo clock with a little bird inside that flies out of
a door every hour and tells you the time? Except when it is time to go
to school or to bed you are doubtless amused to hear him hiccough
cuckoo, cuckoo, the mechanical notes that tell his name. Cuckoo clocks
were first made in Europe where the common species of cuckoo calls in
this way, but don't imagine its American cousins do. Our yellow-billed
cuckoo's unmusical, guttural notes sound something like a tree toad's
rattle, _kuk-kuk, kuk-kuk, kuk-kuk, kr-r-r-uck, kr-r-r-uck,
kr-r-r-uck, kr-r-ruck, cow, cow, cow, cow!_ This is his complete
"song," but usually one hears only a portion of it. The black-billed
cuckoo's voice is softer, and its cow notes run together, otherwise
their "songs" are alike. Both of our common cuckoos are slim, graceful
birds about twelve inches long--longer than a robin. They are solitary
creatures and glide silently among the foliage of trees and shrubbery,
rarely giving you a good look at their satiny, grayish-brown backs and
dull-white {206} breasts. You may know the yellow-billed cuckoo by the
yellow lower-half of his long, curved bill, his cinnamon-brown wings
and the conspicuous white thumb-nail spots on his dark tail feathers.
If you were to dip your thumb in white paint, then pinch these outer
quills, you would leave similar marks.
Most birds will not touch the hairy, fuzzy caterpillars--very
disagreeable mouthfuls, one would think. But happily cuckoos enjoy
them as well as the smooth, slippery kind. "I guess they like the
custard inside," said a little boy I know who had stepped on a fat
caterpillar on the path. "Cuckoos might well be called caterpillar
birds," wrote Florence Merriam Bailey, "for they are so given to a
diet of the hairy caterpillars that the walls of their stomachs are
actually permeated with the hairs, and a section of stomach looks like
the smoothly brushed top of a gentleman's beaver hat." When you see
the webs that the tent caterpillar stretches across the ends of the
branches of fruit and nut trees toward the end of summer, or early
autumn, watch for the cuckoo's visits. Orioles, also, tear open the
webs to get at the wiggling morsels inside, but they leave dead and
mutilated remains behind them, showing that their appetite for web
worms is less keen than that of the cuckoos, who eat them up clean.
Fortunately the caterpillar of the terribly destructive gypsy moth is
another favourite dainty.
[Illustration]
The flicker.
[Illustration]
Two baby cuckoos on the rickety bundle of sticks that by
courtesy we call a nest.
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Perhaps you have heard that the cuckoo, like the naughty cowbird,
builds no nest and lays its eggs in other birds' cradles? This is true
only of the European cuckoo. Its American cousin makes a poor apology
for a nest, it is true, merely a loose bundle or platform of sticks,
as flimsily put together as a dove's nest. The greenish-blue eggs or
the naked babies must certainly fall through, one would think. Still
it is all the cuckoos' own, and they are proud of it. But so sensitive
and fearful are they when a human visitor inspects their nursery that
they will usually desert it, never to return, if you touch it, so
beware of peeping!
When the skinny cuckoo babies are a few days old, blue pin-feathers
begin to appear, and presently their bodies are stuck full of fine,
sharply pointed quills like a well-stocked pin cushion. Porcupine
babies you might think them now. But presto! every pin-feather
suddenly fluffs out the day before the youngsters leave the nest, and
they are clothed in a suit of soft feathers like their parents. In a
few months young cuckoos, hatched as far north as New England and
Canada or even Labrador, are strong enough to fly to Central or South
America to spend the winter.
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BELTED KINGFISHER
_Called also: The Halcyon_
This Izaak Walton of birddom, whom you may see perched as erect as a
fish hawk on a snag in the lake, creek or river, or on a dead limb
projecting over the water, on the lookout for minnows, chub, red fins,
samlets or any other small fry that swims past, is as expert as any
fisherman you are ever likely to know. Sharp eyes are necessary to see
a little fish where sunbeams dance on the ripples and the refracted
light plays queer tricks with one's vision. Once a victim is sighted,
how swiftly the lone fisherman dives through the air and water after
it, and how accurately he strikes its death-blow behind the gills! If
the fish be large and lusty it may be necessary to carry it to the
snag and give it a few sharp knocks with his long powerful bill to end
its struggles. These are soon over, but the kingfisher's have only
begun. See him gag and writhe as he swallows his dinner, head first,
and then, regretting his haste, brings it up again to try a wider
avenue down his throat! Somebody shot a kingfisher which had tried to
swallow so large a fish that the tail was sticking out of his mouth,
while its head was safely stored below in the bird's stomach. After
the meat digests, {209} the indigestible skin, bones, and scales of
the fish are thrown up without the least nausea.
A certain part of a favourite lake or stream this fisherman patrols
with a sense of ownership and rarely leaves it. Alone, but
self-satisfied, he clatters up and down his beat as a policeman, going
his rounds, might sound his rattle from time to time. The
rattle-headed bird knows every pool where minnows play, every
projection along the bank where a fish might hide, and is ever on the
alert, not only to catch a dinner, but to escape from the sight of the
child who intrudes on his domain and wants to "know" him. You cannot
mistake this big, chunky bird, fully a foot long, with grayish-blue
upper parts, the long, strong wings and short, square tail dotted in
broken bars of white, and with a heavy, bluish band across his white
breast. His mate and children wear rusty bands instead of blue. The
crested feathers on top of his big, powerful head reach backward to
the nape like an Indian chief's feather bonnet, and give him
distinction. Under his thick, oily plumage, as waterproof as a duck's,
he wears a suit of down under-clothing.
No doubt you have heard that all birds are descended from reptile
ancestors; that feathers are but modified scales, and that a bird's
song is but the glorified hiss of the serpent. Then {210} the
kingfisher and the bank swallow retain at least one ancient custom of
their ancestors, for they still place their eggs in the ground. The
lone fisherman chooses a mate early in the spring and, with her help,
he tunnels a hole in a bank next a good fishing ground. A minnow pool
furnishes the most-approved baby food. Perhaps the mates will work two
or three weeks before they have tunnelled far enough to suit them and
made a spacious nursery at the end of the long hall. Usually from five
to eight white eggs are laid about six feet from the entrance on a
bundle of grass, or perhaps on a heap of ejected fish bones and
refuse. While his queen broods, the devoted kingfisher brings her the
best of his catch. At first their babies are as bare and skinny as
their cuckoo relatives. When the father or mother bird flies up stream
with a fish for them, giving a rattling call instead of ringing a
dinner bell, all the hungry youngsters rush forward to the mouth of
the tunnel; but only one can be satisfied each trip. Then all run
backward through the inclined tunnel, like reversible steam engines,
and keep tightly huddled together until the next exciting rattle is
heard. Both parents are always on guard to drive off mink, rats and
water snakes that are the terrors of their nursery.
[Illustration]
Waiting for mamma and fish
[Illustration]
Young belted kingfisher on his favourite snag
[Illustration]
Kingfisher on the look-out for a dinner
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