The Cuckoos. 115 



Surely if they are e^er tristis it should be when their 

 wintry fare is under the drifted snow; but even then their 

 ga,j calls mingle in the swamps with the tinkling notes of 

 the juncos and tree sparrows, and their manners are 

 much the same as in the old summer days, excepting the 

 courting and nest-building and home-life — all fountains 

 of song and gladness. Why should they be sad? They 

 know that spring will soon plant the dandelions over the 

 transformed face of the meadows; and when the cottony 

 seeds supplant the yellow of the spreading rays, the old 

 life of song and revelry will begin anew. Sitting on the 

 ripened disks of the dandelions, they can again pull apart 

 the downy pistils and sow them upon the warming 

 southern breezes, and bound here and there in the sun- 

 shine that they love so well. They know that they, too, 

 like the Cinderella of our childhood, have a fiiiry god- 

 mother who will transform their winter robes of brown 

 into the brilliant robes they formerly wore, and under 

 her magic wand their rusty garbs will glow with the 

 lemon and jet. Thus they are ever happy, scattering 

 cheer amid the gloom of winter as well as in the bright- 

 ness of summer, and winning their way into the friend- 

 ship of cver}^ lover of nature. 



THE CUCKOOS. 



To one who regularly studies the manners of the 

 tenants of the hedgerows, the slender, lithe forms, and 

 the coarse, guttural notes of the cuckoos become charac- 

 teristics of the avian life of the osage orange rows. How- 

 ever, owing to their reserved disposition, secluded habits, 

 and noiseless, owl-like flight, these shy denizens of our 

 hedges, woods, groves, parks, and orchards are strangers 

 to most persons not specially interested in the birds. 

 Their hollow, croaking notes, heard in the summer from 

 the shade trees of our streets and parks at all hours of 

 day and even at night, are popularly thought to portend 

 rain, which belief has suggested for them, and particularly 

 for the yellow-billed species, the titles of" rain-crow" and 

 •'rain-dove." Throughout June, 1893, the calls of these 



