CUCKOO 193 



getting them on to his back, which is broad and hollow, and throw- 

 ing them over the side of the nest. If any imhatched eggs remain 

 in the nest, he gets rid of them in the same way. 



The food of the cuckoo is exclusively insectivorous, and consists 

 in large part of hairy caterpillars, which most birds refuse to touch. 

 The indigestible portions of the food he swallows are cast up in 

 small pellets. 



By August the old birds take their departure ; the young migrate 

 one to two months later. 



No fewer than three exotic cuckoos have been placed on the list 

 of British birds. Two of these are American species : the yellow- 

 billed cuckoo {Coccyzus americanus) and the black-billed cuckoo 

 {C. erythroplithalmus). The third is the great spotted cuckoo 

 {Coccystes glandarius)^ an African species, which visits Spain in 

 summer, and, like our bird, is parasitical, but has the habit of 

 depositing its eggs in the nests of various species of the crow family. 



Barn- Owl. 

 Strix flammea. 



Beak yellowish white ; upper parts light tawny yellow 

 minutely variegated with brown, gi'ey, and white ; face and lower 

 plumage white, the feathers of the margin tipped with brown. 

 Length, fourteen inches. 



The barn-owl is one of the very few species that have almost 

 a world-wide range. It is resident throughout the British Islands, 

 and inhabits the greater part of Europe ; it extends to Africa, in- 

 cluding Madagascar ; to India and America, and to the Malaysian, 

 Australian, and Polynesian regions ; and is found in islands so 

 widely separated and far removed from the mainland as the 

 Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape de Verde. The short-eared 

 owl has a distribution just as wide, or even wider ; but that bird, 

 wherever found, is of a wandering habit, making his home and 

 breeding-place wherever food is abundant, and staying not where it 

 fails him. His action resembles, only on a vaster scale, that of the 

 nomads of the human race, who break up their camp and move 

 away from the district that no longer affords pasture to their cattle. 

 Thus, in the case of this species, the vagrant habit may be held to 



