TANGLE-LEAF PAPERS. 49 
the most interesting habits of the English 
cuckoo. 
I am aware that naturalists have stoutly 
claimed that our yellow-bill never lays its eggs 
in other birds’ nests; but I have the evidence 
of my own eyes to the contrary. I was plying 
a country lad with questions touching the birds 
and nests of his neighborhood, when he in- 
formed me that a robin and a rain-crow had a 
nest “in cahoot”’ * in an apple-tree just across 
a lane from where we stood. Of course I was 
anxious to seé that nest at once. It was built 
in the usual robin fashion, stacked up in a low 
crotch of the tree, and contained three robin 
eggs and one cuckoo egg. This was a num- 
ber of years ago; but so late as the spring of 
1883 I found a cuckoo’s egg in the nest of a 
blue-jay. In the mountain region of North 
Georgia, where the yellow-bill nests among the 
haw thickets, I have seen it carrying its egg in 
its mouth, no doubt with the purpose of deposit- 
ing it in the care of some other bird. Wher- 
ever I have gone I have heard this cuckoo 
charged with eating the eggs of other birds; 
but I believe the charge has no better founda- 
tion than the mistake of observers, who, seeing 
it with its own egg in its mouth, naturally sup- 
pose that it has been robbing some neighbor- 
bird’s nest. My opinion is, that by the time 
our country shall have reached the age of the 
England of to-day our cuckoos will have be- 
come confirmed in all the habits of the Euro- 
pean species. At best the bird is very indif- 
ferent to nest-building, and its natural bent is 
towards entirely evading the reponsibility. 
* “Tn cahoot” is a common Western and Southern 
phrase for in partnership. 
4 
