° 
THE BLACK-BILLED CUCKOO. 85 
sticks and twigs, and sometimes a few pieces of moss. The 
eges are usually four in number; they are of a light 
greenish-blue color, and almost invariably larger than those 
of the Black-billed Cuckoo. A number of specimens before 
me vary from 1.07 to 1.25 of an inch in length, by from .84 
to .96 inch in breadth. But one brood is reared in the 
season. 
COCCYGUS ERYTHROPHTHALMUS, — Bonaparte. 
The Black-billed Cuckoo. 
Cuculus erythrophthalmus, Wilson. Am. Orn., IV. (1811), 16. 
Coccyzus erythrophthalmus, Audubon. Orn. Biog., I. (1832), 170. Bonap. 
Syn., 42. < 
DESCRIPTION. 
Bill entirely black; upper parts generally of a metallic greenish-olive, ashy to- 
wards the base of the bill; beneath pure-white, with a brownish-yellow tinge on the 
throat; inner webs of the quills tinged with cinnamon; under surface of all the tail 
feathers hoary ash-gray; all beneath the central, on either side, suffused with darker 
to the short, bluish-white, and not well-defined tip; a naked red skin round the eye; 
iris, hazel.1 
Length about twelve inches; wing, five; tail, six and a half. 
This species is quite abundantly distributed throughout 
New England as a summer visitor, reaching to more north- 
ern latitudes than the other. It arrives from the South 
about the first week in May; 
and, like the Yellow-billed 
Cuckoo, the males precede 
the females. I have exam- 
ined numbers of the first 
birds that arrived in differ- 
ent seasons, and they were 
invariably males; the females 
making their appearance 
about ten days or a fortnight 
later. The habits of the two 
species are very similar, although the present bird prefers 
the more cultivated and open districts, while the other 
1 Insucceeding species, when the color of the iris is not given, it is understood to 
be dark-hazel or black. 
