CUCKOO. 99 



Henry Gurney, and William Richard Fisher, Esqrs., in their 

 account of the Birds found in that county. 



The general appearance of the Cuckoo is strikingly like that 

 of the female Sparrow-Hawk. It frequents localities of the 

 most opposite description the dreary fen, the wild heath of 

 the open treeless moor, as well as those in which brushwood 

 abounds, and the well-wooded hedge-rows of the best cultivated 

 districts. 



It need hardly be mentioned that the Cuckoo is a migratory 

 bird: 'in April come he will,' and that about the middle of 

 the month generally on the 17th.; it has been heard on the 

 15th.; once on the 13th., as mentioned by Mr. Thompson, of 

 Belfast, but frequently not until one or other of the .days 

 between these dates and the 30th. One was both heard and 

 seen at Malvern, in Worcestershire, a neighbourhood which 

 has been noticed as more than ordinarily abounding in these 

 birds, on the 12th. of January, 1851, as recorded by F. R. 

 Gibbes, Esq., of Northallerton, in 'The Naturalist,' page 43; 

 and on the 11-th. of April, also in the present year, two were 

 seen by J. 0. Harper, Esq., of Norwich, as recorded in 'The 

 Naturalist,' page 162. One of them was heard at the same 

 time, and the other was shot, and proved to have been carrying 

 its egg in its bill. The males arrive a day or two before 

 the females; and the old birds leave the country in the autumn 

 before the young ones. The general time for the former to 

 depart is in the end of July or beginning of August; but it 

 would appear as if, though they commence their outward-bound 

 movement from north to south, about this time, that they 

 do not finally quit the land until rather later. 



An adult Cuckoo was shot near Thirsk, Yorkshire, by Mr. 

 Johnstone, son of the Rev. Charles Johnstone, Canon of York, 

 on the 14th. of August, in the present year, 1851; and another 

 old one near Leeds, on the 24th. of July, also in this year, 

 by Mr. Bond, of that place. Another has been seen on the 

 31st. of July. The young birds do not leave before September; 

 and have been known in Cornwall until October, and likewise 

 in Oxfordshire, by the Revs. Andrew and Henry Matthews, 

 who also record in their 'Catalogue of the Birds of Oxford- 

 shire and its Neighbourhood,' that 'on the 23rd. and 24th. 

 of September, 1848, a Cuckoo was heard singing in the early 

 part of the morning:' another was heard near Belfast, on the 

 7th. of July, 1838; and another by Mr. W. H. White, on the 

 28th. of July, as recorded in the 'Magazine of Natural History,' 



