2o8 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



different years. During some seasons it is quite as numerously represented as 

 the Black-bill, in others decidedly less so. It is a familiar bird, given to frequent- 

 ing cultivated grounds near houses. We continue to see or hear it in May and 

 June throughout such densely populated parts of Cambridge as those lying 

 between Harvard Square and Mount Auburn, although it is now less often met 

 with here than in the more thinly settled country further inland. Its favorite 

 summer haunts are apple orchards, brush-grown lanes and roadsides, causeways 

 shaded by willows, and dense thickets near water. It used to breed rather com- 

 monly in the Maple Swamp, — where I have also found it lingering well into the 

 autumn on one or two occasions, — and within recent years it has repeatedly 

 nested in the pear trees in our garden. 



105. Coccyzus erythrophthalmus (Wils.). 

 Black-billed Cuckoo. Black-bill. 



Common summer resident. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



May 6, 1905, one heard, Cambridge, W. Brewster. 



May 12 — September 20. 

 October 16, 1890, one seen, Fresh Pond Swamps, W. Faxon. 



NESTING DATES. 



May 20 — June 5. 



Much that I have just said of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo will apply equally 

 well to the Black-bill. We hear the voices of both every summer in our 

 city gardens, and elsewhere in the Cambridge Region the birds occur together 

 or in close pro.ximity in many localities. The Black-billed species, however, is, 

 on the whole, a more retiring bird than the other — more given to haunting ex- 

 tensive tracts of dry upland woods and to nesting in wild apple trees, Virginia 

 junipers and barberry bushes in remote rocky pastures such as those which lie 

 scattered along the crest and sides of the high ridge between Arlington and 

 Waverley. 



In late summer and early autumn I have found the Black-billed Cuckoo 

 oftenest in the Maple Swamp, where it feeds freely on the berries of the 

 deadly nightshade. 



