512 THE CUCKOO. 



essentially. Until now the genus is confined to the one species 

 in Britain, but several others are found in the warmer parts of 

 Europe. They construct no nest, but place their eggs in those 

 of other birds. They are insectivorous and solitary. 



The Common Cuckoo. 



Cueulus Qanorus. (Linn.) 



i. 

 ''When daisies pied and violets blue, 

 And lady-smocks all silver white — 

 And cuckoo-bnds of yellow hue — 



Do paint the meadows with delight : 

 The cuckoo then on every tree 

 Mocks married men, for this sings he : — 



Cuckoo — 

 Cuckoo, cuckoo — O, word of fear, 

 Unpleasiug to a married ear." 



II. 

 " When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, 



And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, 

 When turtles tread, and rooks and daws, 



And maidens bleach their summer smocks, 

 The cuckoo then on every tree 

 Mocks married men, for thus siners he : — 



Cuckoo — 

 Cuckoo, cuckoo— O. word of fear, 

 Unpleasing to a married ear." — "Love's Labour Lost." 



The cuckoo is a summer migrant, but stays the shortest time 

 of all our summer visitants, hence possibly the necessity of it 

 leaving its eggs and young to the care of foster parents. It 

 arrives in the first of April ("all fool's day"), and leaves us 

 early in July, hence called the "gowk," in reference to a 

 "gowk's errand" on the first of April; but I have heard it 

 here in the middle of March. In 1883 it was heard in Fife on 

 March 8th, at Markinch on February 3rd, and in Balgonie 

 woods, near Markinch, on March 27th, 1884. Its usual food is 

 hairy caterpillars, such as bombyx caja, but it lives on all kinds 

 of insects, and, like the goatsucker, it sometimes hawks for 

 moths in the twilight, for which its wide mouth is suited. The 

 crop of one, opened for the purpose, contained large phaloence, 

 moths of several kinds, and their eggs, small scarabs, spiders, 



