Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 



watching. In repose the bird looks dazed or stupid, but as it 

 darts about among the trees after insects, noiselessly slipping to 

 another one that promises better results, and hopping along the 

 limbs after performing a series of beautiful evolutions among the 

 branches as it hunts for its favorite "tent caterpillars," it appears 

 what it really is : an unusually active, graceful, intelligent bird. 



A solitary wanderer, nevertheless one cuckoo in an apple 

 orchard is worth a hundred robins in ridding it of caterpillars and 

 inch-worms, for it delights in killing many more of these than it 

 can possibly eat. In the autumn it varies its diet with minute 

 fresh-water shellfish from the swamp and lake. Mulberries, that 

 look so like caterpillars the bird possibly likes them on that 

 account, it devours wholesale. 



Family cares rest lightly on the cuckoos. The nest of both 

 species is a ramshackle affair a mere bundle of twigs and sticks 

 without a rim to keep the eggs from rolling from the bush, where 

 they rest, to the ground. Unlike their European relative, they 

 have the decency to rear their own young and not impose this 

 heavy task on others; but the cuckoos on both sides of the Atlan- 

 tic are most erratic and irregular in their nesting habits. The 

 overworked mother-bird often lays an egg while brooding over 

 its nearly hatched companion, and the two or three half-grown 

 fledglings already in the nest may roll the large greenish eggs out 

 upon the ground, while both parents are off searching for food to 

 quiet their noisy clamorings. Such distracting mismanagement 

 in the nursery is enough to make a homeless wanderer of any 

 father. It is the mother-bird that tumbles to the ground at your 

 approach from sheer fright ; feigns lameness, trails her wings as 

 she tries to entice you away from the nest. The male bird shows 

 far less concern ; a no more devoted father, we fear, than he is 

 a lover. It is said he changes his mate every year. 



Altogether, the cuckoo is a very different sort of bird from 

 what our fancy pictured. The little Swiss creatures of wood that 

 fly out of the doors of clocks and call out the bed-hour to sleepy 

 children, are chiefly responsible for the false impressions of our 

 mature years. The American bird does not repeat its name, and 

 its harsh, grating " kuk, kuk," does not remotely suggest the 

 sweet voice of its European relative. 



142 



