96 YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO. 
Its food consists of insects and caterpillars, as also berries, 
and it occasionally destroys the eggs of other birds. With 
the former-named the young are also fed, and both birds 
unite in the task of providing for them. 
The note, resembling the syllables ‘kowe, kowe, kowe, kowe,’ 
is uttered first slowly, and then faster until it ends so rapidly 
that the notes seem to run into one another, and it is also 
repeated backwards with a relative change of time. It appears 
to have some imitative powers of voice; and hence Wilson 
imagines its name of Cow-bird to be derived; but it occurs 
to me as possible that its note, just described, may have been 
the origin of it. The name of Rain-bird has also, he says, 
been applied to it from its being observed to be most clamorous 
immediately before rain. 
The nest is commenced about the end of the first week in 
May. 
This species of Cuckoo does build a nest for itself, though 
of rude construction, and nearly flat. It is placed on the 
branch of a tree, and is made of small sticks and twigs, 
intermixed with weeds and blossoms. Meyer says that it is 
made of roots and wool. 
The eggs, three, four, or five, generally four in number, 
are of a uniform greenish blue colour, and of a duly propor- 
tionate size. As if, however, every kind of Cuckoo must have 
something peculiar about it, the one before us does not begin 
to hatch its eggs when all have been laid, but commences at 
once with the first, the necessary consequence of which is 
that each successive egg is hatched later than its predecessor; 
and thus the family of Cuckoos exhibit various stages of 
advancement while yet in the nest. The ‘rationale’ of this is 
assuredly not as yet ‘dreampt of in our philosophy.’ 
Male; length, one foot to one foot one inch; bill, rather 
long, and a little curved, black at the tip above and below; 
the remainder of the lower part is yellow, and of the upper 
black, edged with yellow at the base; iris, hazel, but Meyer 
says yellow, feathered close to the eyelid, which is yellow. 
Head, crown, neck, which on the sides is white, behind, and 
nape, cinereous brown, with a tinge of olive; chin, throat, 
and breast, greyish white; back, as the head and nape. The 
wings expand to the width of one foot four inches; the first 
quill feather is more than an inch shorter than the second, 
the second shorter than the third or fourth, but equal to the 
fifth; the third longer than the fourth, and the longest. in 
