May 



the birds, which poets have loved to sing as the blithe 

 harbingers of spring, to be but the Hagars and 

 Ishmaels of bird-dom. fThe appearance of this bird 

 in any spot is the signaTfor small birds at once to 

 pack and chase it on to some other place, whence it 

 will be similarly driven out in ceaseless wandering. 

 Small birds are said by some to chase the cuckoo 

 because of its resemblance to a hawk ; but, as small 

 birds are as well acquainted with the cuckoo as with 

 hawks, it would be as reasonable to maintain that 

 they chase the latter because of their resemblance to 

 the cuckoo. Small birds, although unable to fathom 

 the mystery of their connection with the cuckoo, 

 know it for a meddler, and must often enough 

 surprise it in its surreptitious visits to their nests 

 at a time when such visits are least to be tolerated. 

 Although apparently incapable of connecting this 

 meddling with the tragic consequences to their own 

 eggs frequently attending it, or of recognizing that 

 an alien has been billeted upon them, they seem to 

 grasp the fact that the cuckoo is an intruder, and a 

 coward to boot, and as such to be chased with im- 

 punity. No one who has seen, as I have, a couple 

 of cuckoos pursued unremittingly by a rabble of 

 birds ludicrously small considering the size of their 

 quarry, but must have recognized that conscience 

 makes cowards of cuckoos as well as of men. To 

 see a thirteen-and-a-half-inch bird, with a queue of 

 six-inch stalwarts behind it, fleeing from point to 

 point in its efforts to escape from them, suggests the 



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