170 THE CUCKOO AND HE II NEST. 



bantam air, and the ingenuity he displays in find- 

 ing food and shelter. We have worse citizens in 

 America (not in feathers) than this pert little for- 

 eigner, although 1 am by no means his champion. 



Whimsical as it ma}' seem, the cuckoo is one of 

 my favorite birds, albeit he glides noiselessly and 

 swings himself among the branches in a stealthy, 

 serpent-like way that almost makes one's flesh 

 creep until one has grown used to his manner. I 

 remember that at first this furtive, uncanny habit 

 made me think of the ghouls of which I liad read, 

 when a boy, in the Arabian Nights. But God has 

 made him so, and why should j^ou and I find fault? 



During the summer of 1890 I had the pleasure 

 of finding four nests of the cuckoo, the first I had 

 ever seen. One day — the fifteenth of July it was 

 — I was loitering in the more open space at one 

 end of the woods, when my eye caught a dark ob- 

 ject lodged in the tops of a tangled clump of black- 

 berry bushes. A closer inspection revealed a bird 

 sitting in the cup of her nest, stretching up her 

 slender neck and head and long, curved beak, while 

 her dark eyes looked inquiringly at me. It was a 

 yellow-billed cuckoo ; I saw that at a glance. Yes, 

 it was a " find," one that made my pulses throb, for 

 I had lono- been wantint>- to see a cuckoo's domicile 



