22 LIFE HISTORIES OF NOETH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



rather late, and oftener, I believe, in the first week in July than in June. Like 

 most birds, they are more noisy during- mating time than at other seasons, and 

 they are most often heard during damp, cloudy weather or before a storm, and 

 on this account they are often called "Rain Crows," their continuous calls being- 

 supposed to presage wet weather. 



As a rule they are shy and silent, unobtrusive birds, their plain, grayish- 

 brown upper parts, with a faint bronze luster, harmonizing so perfectly with their 

 surroundings that they are readily overlooked in the dense foliage and tangled 

 undergrowth whicli they usually frequent, and it is no easy matter to study 

 them closely, though occasionally a pair will select its nesting site close to 

 human habitations and even in cities, when they lose their natural shyness to 

 some extent. 



Mr. Mark L. C. Wilde, of Camden, New Jersey, writes me: "On June 22, 

 1893, while passing the corner of Sixth and Market streets, I was surprised to 

 see a Yellow-billed Cuckoo fly off" her nest, which was built on the limb of a 

 maple tree that hvmg over Market street, on which the electric cars run every 

 ten or fifteen minutes. The nest contained two fresh eggs. There are no 

 woods nor open fields within a mile or so of the tree in which the nest was built, 

 although there are a number of shade trees around the city and plenty of 

 caterpillars for them to feed upon." 



In the southern portions of their range, including Florida and the Gulf 

 States, nidification begins occasionally early m April, and fresh eggs may be 

 found sometimes in the last two weeks of this month; but the majority of these 

 birds rarely commence laying here before the second week in May. In the 

 District of Columbia a few pairs nest in the latter part of this month, but the 

 greater portion do not before June, and occasionally not before July, while 

 instances of fresh egg'S, possibly second layings, have been found in the latter 

 part of August and even in the beginning of September. In the northern jDor- 

 tions of its i-ange the breeding season is at its height during the latter part of 

 June and the first week of July, and here one brood only is raised, while in the 

 south they sometimes raise two. 



Mr. O. Widmann, of Old Orchard, Missouri, has kindly sent me the following 

 notes on this species: "The Yellow-billed Cuckoos begin to lay liere May 15. 

 If the eggs are taken and none left in the nest, the birds abandon it and build 

 another; but I do not think that two broods are raised in a season. This species 

 begins to arrive here in the hist days of April, Ijut to get the earliest dates one 

 must be up at 2 a. m., when their call is heard from time to time. After daybreak 

 they are seldom heard before the first days of May, regularly only after the 5th. 

 I found them very numerous in the St. Francis region the second week in May, 

 where they were among- the most conspicuous birds. At tliat time they seemed 

 to live mostly on a large kind of May or willow fly {Ephemera), which the male 

 bird caught and brought to his mate, who kept quietlv perched and apparently 

 awaiting his attentions. He alighted gracefully on her back and presented 

 complaisantly the choice morsel, which was received with half-tm-ued head and 



