190 CUCULID^. 



Wcos publislicd in the Field Naturalists"' Magazine in January 

 1883. Mr. Ball, of Dublin Castle, in a letter to the editor 

 made known the capture of the first specimen, which was shot 

 near Youghal, in the county of Cork, in the autumn of 1825. 

 When brought to Mr. Ball by the butler of a gentleman in 

 the neighbourhood, who had shot it but a few minutes be- 

 fore, it was still warm and bleeding. The second was shot 

 at a later period at Old Connaught, near Bray. The Corn- 

 wall specimen was the subject of a private communication, and 

 the fourth was shot on the estate of Lord Cawdor in Wales 

 during the autumn of 1882. This last example has now, 

 by the liberality of his lordship, been deposited in the na- 

 tional collection at the British Museum, and one, if not 

 both, of the specimens killed in Ireland, were exhibited at 

 the Zoological Society by Mr. Thompson of Belfast in 

 June 1835. 



This Bird, says Mr. Audubon, in the first volume of his 

 American Ornithological Biography, " I have met with in all 

 the low grounds and damp places in Massachusets, along the 

 line of Upper Canada, pretty high on the Mississippi and 

 Arkansas, and in every state between these boundary lines. 

 Its appearance in the state of New York seldom takes place 

 before the beginning of May, and at Green Bay not until the 

 middle of that month." The most frequent note of this bird 

 sounds so much like the word " cow,"''' frequently repeated, 

 that it has obtained the general appellation of Cow-bird ; 

 and from being particularly vociferous before rain, it is in 

 some states called the Rain-crow. Unlike our English 

 Cuckoo, this American species builds a nest and rears its 

 yovmg with great assiduity ; but it sometimes robs smaller 

 birds of their eggs, and its own egg, which is not easily mis- 

 taken from its particular colour, is occasionally found in ano- 

 ther bird's nest. Mr. Audubon says, " That its own nest is 

 simple, flat, composed of a few dry sticks and grass, formed 



