A LESSON IN NATURAL HISTORY 133 



thinking when I shot the cuckoo Tor the old nat- 

 uralist and called it a "bad" bird. 



It is not a bad bird, but a good and useful and 

 interesting, and, somehow, to me, a very mysteri- 

 ous bird. It is not a singer, yet I love to listen to 

 its notes its tut-tut, tut-tut, tut-tut, tut-tut, 

 cl-uck-cl-uck, kow, kow, kow, kotv! For loud as 

 they are, they are strangely soft, floating notes 

 that come from nowhere in particular. They 

 seem to dangle and dawdle and wave and flutter 

 through the air, just as the bird himself seems to 

 on the wing. He is not the bird of early spring, as 

 the English cuckoo is, so we do not write verses to 

 him as the poets of England have done for hun- 

 dreds of years. Our cuckoo is the bird of mid- 

 summer, and his soft, spirit-like kow, kow, koiv, 

 sounding out on the hot, close days of July and 

 August says rain, rain, rain! And so he is called 

 the ''rain-crow." 



I have never known him to bring the rain with 

 his call, as the tree-toad seems to bring it with 

 his quavering voice. But I have known him to 

 eat worms ; and I did see the gizzard of the one I 

 shot stuck full of caterpillar hairs ; and I do know 

 now that he is not a "bad" bird. And one thing 

 more I know (I learned it that day in the lesson 



