Genus XX. CUCULUS. CUCKOO * 



Species I. CUCULUS CAROLINENSIS. 



YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO. 



[Plate XXVIII. Tig. 1.] 



Cuculus Americanus, Lixn. Syst. ed. 10, p. 111. — Catesb. i., 9. — Lath, i., 537. — 

 Le Coucou de la Cai-oline, Briss. iv., 112.— Ard. Zool. 265, No. 155. 



A STRANGER who visits the United States for the purpose of examin- 

 ino- their natural productions, and passes through our woods in the month 

 of May or June, will sometimes hear as he traverses the herders of deep, 

 retired, high timbered hollows, an uncouth guttural sound or note, re- 

 sembling the syllables kowe, kotve, Jcoive Jcotve kowe ! beginning slowly, 

 but ending so rapidly, that the notes seem to run into each other, and 

 vice versa ; he will hear this frequently without being able to discover 

 the bird or animal from which it proceeds, as it is both shy and solitary, 

 seeking always the thickest foliage for concealment. This is the Yel- 

 low-billed Cuckoo, the subject of the present account. From the imita- 

 tive sound of its note, it is known in many parts by the name of the 

 Coio-hird ; it is also called in Virginia the Rain-Crow, being observed to 

 be most clamorous immediately before rain. 



This species arrives in Pennsylvania, from the south, about the twenty- 

 second of April, and spreads over the country as far at least as Lake 

 Ontario ; is numerous in the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations ; and also 

 breeds in the upper parts of Georgia ; preferring in all these places the 

 borders of solitary swamps and apple-orchards. It leaves us, on its 

 return southward, about the middle of September. 



The singular, I will not say unnatural, conduct of the European Cuckoo, 

 [Cuculus canorus), which never constructs a nest for itself, but drops its 

 eggs in those of other birds, and abandons them to their mercy and 

 management, is so universally known, and so proverbial, that the whole 

 tribe of Cuckoos have, by some inconsiderate people, been stigmatized 

 as destitute of all parental care^ and aiFection. Without attempting to 

 account for this remarkable habit of the European species, far less to 

 consider as an error what the wisdom of Heaven has imposed as a duty 



* This genus has been considerably restricted by recent ornithologists. The two 

 species referred by Wilson to their genus belong to the genus Coccycus of Vieillot, 

 adopted by Temminck. 



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