There are ihirty-live kinds of American cuckoos, so it is said, but only two 

 of them, the black-l)illed and the yellow-billed, are familiar to those of us who 

 search the northern fields of the Middle West. In jj^eneral ai)pearance the tw(j 

 birds are much alike, the main difference beinjj expressed bv tlicir respective 

 names. The yellow-billed cuckoo is much the more common in nearly all i)laces.. 

 The chances are that you will hear the l)ird before you see it, for its note 

 attracts instant attention. Do not expect the American cuckoo to say "CAickoo." 

 Jt won't; the utterance of that well-known note is left to the Enj^lish bird, and 

 to the little wood and metal creatures that poke their heads out of the tojjs of 

 Swiss clocks every hour and proclaim the time. The cuckoo's note sounds 

 almost exactly like the first four or five utterances of a stuttering person who is 

 trxing hard to twist his tonij^ue into -^hape to say some simple word. When you 

 hear from the heart of some thick-leaved tree a sound like "uk-uk-uk-uk-uk-uk- 

 uk-uk,"' you may make up your mind tliat the cuckoo has stopj)ed long- enough 

 from his laudable work of caterpillar eating to attempt to say a few words. In 

 many farming districts the cuckoo is known as the rain crow, because it is 

 supposed to wax noisy just before a shower. I have known the bird to be a poor 

 ])rophet, and one that soon became without honor even with those who hitherto 

 had piimed to it their faith. I never knew the cuckoos to be so noisy as they 

 were one July month in northern Illinois when the drought killed almost every 

 green thing in the land. 



California WoodpCclLtViMelanerpesformicivorus and races) 



Length, about Oy'j inches. Easily distinguished from its fellows by its gen- 

 eral black color, white forehead, throat patch, belly and wing patch. 



Range: Breeds from northwestern Oregon, California, Arizona, and New 

 ^lexico south through lower California to Costa Rica. 



The California woodpecker is a noisy, frolicsome bird and by all odds the 

 most interesting of our woodpeckers. Its range seems to be determined by that 

 of the oaks upon which it lives and from which it draws a large part of its 

 subsistence. In California the bird is known to many by the Spanish name. 

 carpintero, or carpenter, and its shop is the oak, in the dead limbs of which as 

 in the bark of pines, it bores innumerable holes, each just large enough to receive 

 an acorn. That the birds do not regard the filling of these storehouses as work, 

 but on the contrary take great pleasure in it, is evident from their joyotis out- 

 cries and from the manner they chase each other in their trips from tree to tree 

 like boys at tag. In California many of the country school houses are unoccupied 

 during the summer and the woodpeckers do serious damage by drilling holes in 

 the window casings and elsewhere with a view to using them as storage places. 

 As long as the acorn crop lasts, so long does the storing work go on. Meanwhile 

 the jays and squirrels slip in and rob the woodpecker's larder. Though this 

 woodpecker eats insects, including some harmful ones, they form less than a third 

 of its entire fare. 



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