BROODING CUCKOO 



CHAPTER XV 



The Yellow -Billed Cuckoo: Coccyzus American us 



IN SMALL THICKLY LEAVED TREES 



I LOVE the Cuckoo. In this 

 taste there is much good company, 

 for I could quote, to the length of a 

 chapter, poems and songs by lovers 

 of the bird. Traditions concerning 

 it are almost as old and as inter- 

 woven in fable and legend as those 

 of the Kingfisher. It is an individ- 

 ual bird, while its characteristics are 

 sharply outlined. It is a bird that 

 has been slandered by writers learned in the lore of books, but 

 lacking in knowledge of the woods and the actual habits of birds. 

 There are charges against it of depositing its eggs in other 

 birds' nests, as do its European relatives. Surely in the length 

 of my life, I have looked into as many birds' nests as any other 

 one person, yet I never saw a Cuckoo egg that had been deposited 

 with other species. It is charged with destroying the nests 

 and young of other birds; I never have seen a suspicion of this 

 characteristic in it, and I have yet to meet a real natural-history 

 worker, of the woods, who has. It is accused, by writers who 

 should know better, of having a filthy, repulsive nest and badly 

 soiled surroundings. This would be to advertise its location 

 widely, while one of the most prominent characteristics of the 

 bird is its power of concealment, its secretive habits. 



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