STRANGE BED-FELLOWS 



Yellow-billed, which are hard to tell apart, unless one 

 gets very near them, which is not easy to do. They are 

 shy, retiring birds, and keep mostly in the thick foliage. 

 Bird students seldom have a better chance to examine 

 a cuckoo in life and see how useful a tribe these birds 

 are than did a certain company of young ladies. I w^as 

 giving a bird lecture at Bradford Academy, Mass., and 

 the next morning took an early bird walk with a party 

 of the girls and a teacher. Beside the path was a wild 

 cherry tree which was stripped bare of foliage and 

 contained the nest of the despoilers, some sort of canker 

 worm or caterpillar. Perched beside this was a Black- 

 billed Cuckoo, breakfasting. We were all within 

 twenty feet of it, and watched it for some minutes eat 

 worm after w^orm, which it took from the nest. If we 

 could only raise cuckoos enough, we might conquer the 

 gypsy moth, that most expensive pest. 



Were it not for the loud, harsh *' cow-cow" notes of 

 the cuckoos, we certainly should think them much 

 rarer than they are. But they are both all too scarce, 

 and generally the Yellow-billed kind has seemed to me 

 the rarer of the two. When I have hunted for their 

 nests I usually have had no success. But now and then 

 I have happened upon a nest of either kind when I was 

 least expecting it. Though I have found more nests 

 of the Yellow-billed in old, retired orchards, I have also 

 found the Black-billed breeding in such places, and I 

 am not sure that they differ materially in the sorts of 

 places which they frequent. 



81 



