142 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
Our cuckoo is not an “ egg-sucker,” so far 
as my observation goes. The popular tradi- 
tion giving him that villanous habit, has 
arisen, no doubt, from the fact that he has 
been seen with an egg in his mouth. I can 
think of no wildwood effect more likely to 
gain a lasting lodgment in one’s memory than 
the appearance of this bird flying along with 
an egg between its mandibles, seeking some 
other bird’s nest in which to safely lodge this 
surplus fruit of an erratic habit. 
The Black-billed species (C. erythrophthal- 
mus) is a little smaller than the Yellow-bill, 
and far less singularly interesting. It lacks 
the white sparkle in the tail and the bright 
reddish copper wing-glint, as well as the dash 
of yellow on the lower mandible ; otherwise it 
is much the same in appearance with C. amert- 
canus. 
I once had a bush-tent built of fragrant 
pine and cedar boughs at the margin of a 
glade, not far from the bank of the Coosa- 
wattee, where I spent a fortnight in the sys- 
tematic study of the yellow-billed cuckoo, the 
lesser shrike, the mocking-bird and the cat- - 
bird. This period extended from about the 
roth to the 25th of April. All around the 
glade grew honey-locust trees, haw-bushes, 
crab-apple and wild-pium thickets and dense 
tangles of blackberry vines. Everything was 
heavy with leaf and bloom ; fragrance loaded 
the air, and the birds all appeared in a great 
hurry to build. I could sit in my tent door 
during the dewy morning hour and watch the 
love-passages, the quarrels, the fights, the nest- 
ing troubles and triumphs of these gay things 
