CUCKOO NOTES. 139 
bird-life, as one might say, where in the sing- 
ing season the air is shaken with a sweet tu- 
mult of voices. Here the persevering egg- 
collector is sure to find the delicately-tinted 
treasures with which he delights to decorate 
his cabinet. The butcher-bird, the grosbeak, 
the cat-bird, the wood-thrush, the brown- 
thrush, the robin, the blue-jay, the mocking- 
bird and the cuckoos all like to build their 
nests in the thorny arms of the haw and plum- 
trees. All these birds are, in a degree, bit- 
ter foes of each other, allowing no opportu- 
nity of venting a little spite to go by unim- 
proved, but they rarely go to the length of 
committing any irreparable wrong. ‘True, the 
blue-jay now and then robs a nest and the 
shrike may impale a smaller bird on a thorn, 
but these acts are the rare exceptions in the 
mating and nesting time. 
The cuckoo, however, must be closely 
watched by all the rest or it will slip its egg 
into a stranger’s nest. Our American bird is 
very sly in performing this parasitic trick, so 
common to the European species, and is 
guilty of a sin in connection therewith which 
adds greatly to the ugliness of the main crime. 
I am led to believe, on the strongest circum- 
stantial evidence, that the yellow-bill species, 
at least, not only carries its egg to the nest of 
another bird, but that it also invariably takes 
away from the nest one of the eggs rightfully 
there. This habit is a very curious and in- 
teresting one. Our cuckoo always builds a 
nest of its own and rears its brood with ex- 
emplary care. The eggs it scatters on occa- 
sion here and there in strange nests are prob- 
ably the result of over-fecundity, for at best 
