48 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
have such queer “notions” about signs and 
omens. For instance, the well-known guttural 
croaking of the yellow-billed cuckoo is, in the 
West and South generally believed to presage 
rain; hence the bird is known amongst the 
rural people by the name of rain-crow. 
I remember with what solemn earnestness 
an old man once heaped maledictions on a 
cuckoo. It was in the midst of a distressing 
drought, and the bird was mournfully uttering 
its netes in- an ‘orchard. ““There’s sthet vaiz 
dad-blasted rain crow a-bellerin’ down ther’ 
ag’in” he cried, savagely wagging his head. 
“‘Ef I hed a gun I’d blow it inter thunder ’n’ 
gone. Ever’thin’ a-burnin’ up an’ the crick a- 
goin’ dry an’ thet air lyin’ rain-crow jest 
a-yowkin’ an’ yowkin’, es ef a flood wer’ a- 
comin’ in less an’ fifteen minutes—blast its 
pictur?!” 
Speaking of the yellow-billed cuckoo, it is 
one of the most interesting of our American 
birds,—a late comer to our Northern woods, 
where about the middle of May it begins a 
shy, shadowy pilgrimage from tree to tree, 
peering furtively among the tufts of young 
leaves, as if bent on some errand of mystery. 
It is a slender, graceful figure, with a dispro- 
portionately long tail and a slim, slightly curved 
bill, which is almost black above and yellow 
below ; its back is drab ; its under parts a pure 
silvery-white, and its tail dark, tipped with 
snow-white. You may know it by its peculiar 
zigzag flight, and by its cry, “ Kaow, Kaow,”’ 
etc., repeated slowly at first, then increasing in 
rapidity to a rattling or pounding croak, and 
finally ending lagginglv as it began. It has all 
