142 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NO TES. 



Our cuckoo is not an " egg-sucker," so far 

 as my observation goes. The popular tradi- 

 tion giving him that villanous habit, has 

 arisen, no doubt, from the fact that he has 

 been seen with an egg in his mouth. I can 

 think of no wildwood effect more likely to 

 gain a lasting lodgment in one's memory than 

 the appearance of this bird flying along with 

 an egg between its mandibles, seeking some 

 other bird's nest in which to safely lodge this 

 surplus fruit of an erratic habit. 



The Black-billed species (C. erythrophthal- 

 mus) is a little smaller than the Yellow-bill, 

 and far less singularly interesting. It lacks 

 the white sparkle in the tail and the bright 

 reddish copper wing-glint, as well as the dash 

 of yellow on the lower mandible ; otherwise it 

 is much the same in appearance with C. ameri- 

 canus. 



I once had a bush-tent built of fragrant 

 pine and cedar boughs at the margin of a 

 glade, not far from the bank of the Coosa- 

 wattee, where I spent a fortnight in the sys- 

 tematic study of the yellow-billed cuckoo, the 

 lesser shrike, the mocking-bird and the cat- 

 bir<j. This period extended from about the 

 loth to the 25th of April. All around the 

 glade grew honey-locust trees, haw-bushes, 

 crab-apple and wild-plum thickets and dense 

 tangles of blackberry vines. Everything was 

 heavy with leaf and bloom ; fragrance loaded 

 the air, and the birds all appeared in a great 

 hurry to build. I could sit in my tent door 

 during the dewy morning hour and watch the 

 love- passages, the quarrels, the rights, the nest- 

 ing troubles and triumphs of these gay things 



