380 



NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



this trait. While I have repeatedly observed facts exactly corresponding with those 

 noticed by Mr. Audubon in the garden of Mr. Rhett, at other times I have found in 

 the opening of the season three or four eggs laid before incubation commenced, and 

 all hatched before others were deposited. Then the parents seemed to depend in no 

 small degree upon the warmth of the bodies of the older offspring to compensate to 

 the younger for their own neglect, as well as for the exposed and insufficient warmth 

 of the nest. I have repeatedly found in a nest three young and two eggs, one of the 

 latter nearly fresh, one with the embryo half developed, while of the young birds, one 

 would be just out of the shell, one half fledged, and one just ready to fly." 



FIG. 183. Coccyzus americanus, yellow-billed cuckoo. 



We have already mentioned that certain cuckoos closely mimic other birds in their 

 appearance. A most extraordinary case is that of the Indian so-called drongo- 

 cuckoo (Surniculus dicruroides), which, as indicated by the names, so exactly imitates 

 the king-crow, or drongo-shrike (Dicrurus\ inhabiting the same locality, in size, form, 

 and color, that there is required considerable attention in order not to confound 

 them, though the arrangement of the toes, of course, at a closer inspection is alone 

 sufficient to separate them. This imitation is the more strange since it has even 

 extended to the curiously furcated tail, a feature elsewhere entirely unexampled among 

 the cuckoos. "Does this cuckoo," asks Dr. Jerdon, "select the nest of the drongo in 



