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Bird - Lore 



under siege. After a while the food was missing; apparently she had swallowed 

 it, having decided that her young could wait a few hours longer, since the enemy 

 seemed inclined to stay awhile. The nestlings were never fed while I was about, 

 nor did their parents once exhibit the least impatience. 



The actions of these birds are characterized by a peculiar gliding quality. 

 Extremely slender and graceful, they move among the close-growing branches 

 with remarkable ease and speed. The eye can scarcely 

 follow these motions. It is well nigh impossible to tell 

 whether the bird moves most by the aid of wings, tail, 

 or feet. The long tail is closely folded, in progressing 

 among the branches, and seems to act just like the 

 shaft of an arrow in sustaining its owner's 

 flight, if that elusive sliding through space can 

 properly be so called. For the most part, it 

 is only in quick turns and in sudden reaches 

 far out or abruptly down from a perch that the tail is somewhat expanded. 

 The bird assumes no special pose in calling, but, the feathers of the throat 

 and upper breast being much expanded in this act, the Cuckoo has, in some 

 positions especially, an odd or ludicrous appearance while sounding his strange 

 notes. There is nothing bird-like about this sound. Usually heard from a 

 hidden source, one might imagine a boy, hidden in the thicket, experimenting 

 with a "devil's fiddle" made from a thin wooden box instead of a tin can. Nor 

 is the unnatural element much lessened by catching the bird in the act; there 

 he sits, apparently in a brown study, dispassionately voicing in those weird 

 kuk-kuks the meditations of a hidden mind. 



It is questionable if any degree of famiHarity possible with the Black-billed 

 Cuckoo would dispel this atmosphere of secrecy .in which he seems ever to 

 move and have his being. In the presence of this strange character, I can well 

 believe one might make a life study of the species, and still perceive that same 

 haunting inscrutability. 



About July 6, the nest was empty. I had learned a little — a very little — 

 of Black-bill ways; I had seen a good many, possibly nearly all, of his poses, 

 and made some fifty distinct sketches of them. But the Cuckoo I had sought 

 to know and had hoped to think of henceforth, with the Robin, Oriole and 

 Song Sparrow, as an intimate acquaintance, remained a Cuckoo still — a 

 recluse, a forbidding, hidden character. 



