Cuckoos. 



Order, Coccyges. 

 Family, Cuculidae. 



387. YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO. (Rain Crow.) Coccyzus 

 americanus. Eleven inches long. Olive-gray above. Ashy white be- 

 low. Slim, graceful body. Bill slightly curved. White spots the size 

 of your finger-nail on tail feathers. Lower mandible yellow. Nests 

 only a few feet above ground. Eggs pale blue-green. 



388. BLACK-BILLED CUCKOO. (Rain Crow.) Coccyzus ery- 

 throphthalmus. Eleven inches long. Olive-gray above. Ashy white 

 below. Slim, graceful body. Bill slightly curved. White spots on tips 

 of tail feathers, but not "finger-nail" shaped as in the yellow-billed 

 cuckoo. Bill entirely black. Red eye-ring. Nests only a few feet 

 above ground. Eggs pale blue-green. 



YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO. 



"Gulp! Gulp! Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!" will come to your ears 

 from your garden sometime. You will wonder if a tree-toad is 

 getting ambitious to sing a bird note or if a mocking bird is trying 

 to sing frogtime. If you follow the gulping you will very likely 

 see a yellow-billed cuckoo, perhaps a black-billed one. When I was 

 a little boy we used to sing in school a song that started out "Softly 

 the cuckoo is calling now". I want to tell you quietly that who- 

 ever wrote that song never heard a real cuckoo but got his bird 

 knowledge from a cuckoo clock. 



Cuckoos are usually very fond of concealment and you will 

 very often have a hard time to get a satisfactory view of one. I 

 have approached them while they were sitting on their eggs think- 

 ing that they would be less shy at that time, but they actually slide 

 from their nests very much as a fish slides over a dam, and away 

 they go into the underbrush as though they were very, very help- 

 less. They are not half as much afraid of people out here in the 

 west as they are in the east. Probably they see them oftener be- 



