Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



seen the cuckoo in his favorite haunts — some 

 country neighborhood where trees and shrubs 

 are abundant enough to give him rests in his 

 short flights and supply the smaller song- 

 sters with convenient nesting-places, which 

 the cuckoo-mother can use in her way. One 

 hears them to the right and left as one punts 

 about the canals of the upper Spree in that odd 

 little country of the Vends, where the old Vend- 

 ish tongue still lingers among the rustics. What 

 a softness, what a dreaminess, yet what alert- 

 ness, in their call ! Very difl^erent is the sound 

 of the American cuckoo — a smaller bird with 

 a louder, hastier, longer note, and a family life 

 that does not lend itself to the grievous charges 

 made against its European cousin. 



Difficult to distinguish whence it comes, the 

 call of the old-world cuckoo baffles the listener 

 like the voice of a ventriloquist, as indeed it is. 

 There 's your uncanny bird, if ever there was 

 one ! And the country people, not content 

 with charging against it the actual tricks and 



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