54 Wizard Cuckoos 



caterpillars and cuckoos all appear together, in a 

 normal year, just before the middle of April. We 

 can hardly miss noticing the luxuriant verdure of 

 the grass and the cuckoo's loud halloo, but the 

 caterpillars are sometimes more elusive. A sure 

 way to verify their reappearance is by looking 

 beneath the overhanging edges of stumps, stones, or 

 large chips of wood in green lanes and on hedge- 

 banks, on warm but overcast mornings when the 

 grass is still sprinkled with a night's rain. The 

 hairy drinker caterpillars, and several other species, 

 seem to choose such refuges on days in April which 

 are too damp and chilly to encourage them to feed 

 in the open, but not so cold as to send them back 

 into the earth. Six weeks later the full-fed drinkers 

 merely retreat on wet days to the thick, lower 

 growth of the grass ; but in April the grass is still 

 thin, the air is colder, and they themselves are 

 smaller and less vigorous. They accordingly seek 

 a more solid screen from uncertain weather, and 

 lie curled, with globes of water on their hairy 

 skins, until the sunshine returns. 



The cuckoo, like the nightingale, is heard far 

 more often than it is seen, but not because it is 

 specially fond of hiding itself. Even in the more 

 wooded parts of England it haunts the open glades 

 and well-timbered meadows, rather than the dense 

 thickets and coverts ; and it is equally at home on 

 the open and treeless moors, where it finds unfailing 

 hospitality for its young in the nests of the meadow- 

 pipit or, as it is called more often in these upland 

 haunts, the titlark, or mosscheeper. A bird which 



