XXXV 



YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO; BAIN-CBOW; BAIN-DOVE 

 387. Coccyzus americanus 



The Yellow-billed Cuckoo has an olive-gray back and 

 is pure white below; its tail is long, white-tipped and 

 edged with white ; the lower mandible is yellow. 



The Yellow-billed Cuckoo breeds throughout the cen- 

 tral part of the United States, but it is a poor builder ; 

 it nests in apple and other low trees, on a horizontal 

 branch from ten to twenty feet from the ground. The 

 nest is a mere platform of sticks with no side walls, and 

 why the eggs and the young birds do not fall off is a 

 mystery. It looks as if every passing breeze would dash 

 them to earth. The eggs are three or four in number, 

 ash colored, and are laid rather late in the season. (Fig. 

 49.) 



These Cuckoos are migratory, leaving their summer 

 homes late in September. The male arrives a week in 

 advance of the female. Both birds work together in 

 building the nest, incubating and feeding the young, and 

 both are loyal mates and devoted parents sentiments 

 not shown by the Cowbird and the European Cuckoo, 

 both of which are polygamous and parasitic in habits. 



The Cuckoo often feigns a broken leg or wing, as it 

 tumbles from the nest at your approach and goes flutter- 

 ing along the ground in an endeavor to lead you away. 



Cuckoos are partial to caterpillars and canker- 

 worms, pests usually shunned by other birds. They lay 

 their eggs over a long time ; hence fertile eggs and large 

 young may be found in a nest at the same time. Yellow- 

 billed Cuckoos have occasionally been known to drop an 

 egg in another bird 's nest. 



I found a Cuckoo's nest containing one egg on the 

 twentieth of July; on the first of August, another was 

 laid ; on September the seventeenth, the old bird was still 

 setting; on the twentieth of September, she abandoned 



116 



