iglrli-lore 



A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECl ION OF BIRDS 



Official Organ of thc Audubon Societies 



Vol. XII 



July— August, 1910 



No. 4 



The Black-billed Cuckoo at Home 



By EDMUND J. SAWYER 



With a photograph and drawings by the author 



EVERY observing bird student knows what is meant 

 by the unbirdlike species — certain not necessarily 

 uncommon, but hardly familiar birds. Some of 

 them are the Woodcock, Cuckoo, Whippoorwill, Nighthawk, 

 Chimney Swift, Hummingbird and, to some extent, the 

 Brown Creeper and Marsh Wren. There is a strangeness 

 ^ about these birds, something by virtue of which we are 

 ^ \ \/'f/^ not allowed to pass them with the mere glance we might 

 .}\ ( bestow upon others which, it may be, we chance to know 

 1 even less about. In some, this strangeness is slight and 



vague; in others, it amounts to an air of mystery which hangs about 

 the bird like a veil. Of the latter, the Cuckoo is a striking example. 

 Wherever seen, a Cuckoo invites our thoughtful attention; there is always 

 the same engrossed, preoccupied bearing, always that suggestion, to a greater 

 or less extent, of the mystic. 



On June 17, 1909, at the foot of a slight, sandy ridge covered with a scanty 

 growth of small oaks, locusts and pines, a Cuckoo 

 slipped silently from a small patch of hazel, or 

 similar bushes, at arm's length from me. She 

 alighted low in a pine a few yards off, and at 

 once proceeded to dress her feathers, giving me as fine a 

 chance as could be wished to identify her as a Black-bill. 

 There was the nest with its two dull blue eggs. It was two 

 feet off the ground, resting on a fallen, dead locust among 

 the branches of which the shoots of bushes had grown ^-'^-^"^ 

 up. Made of long twigs and stiff grass stalks, and with a decided, 

 though moderate, hollow rather well lined, it was something more than 

 a mere griddle of crossed sticks. The lining consisted of a few green 

 leaves under a thin sprinkling of dry, brown, shriveled oak and similar catkins. 

 The nest was so plainly exposed from above, and so Uttle concealed from the 



