OF THE UNITED STATES 263 



r~us, and has been added to our avifauna upon the strength of a 

 single example taken by Mr. William Palmer at Northeast Point, 

 St. Paul's Island, Alaska, on the fourth of July, 1890. This speci- 

 men is now in the collections of the U. S. National Museum. 

 (See The Auk, Vol. xi, 1894, p. 325.) The addition of this species 

 of cuckoo to our fauna might be sufficient excuse for me to give an 

 account of some of the habits of its western, ally, the~coinmon 

 cuckoo of the Old World, but as I have never had the oppor- 

 tunity of studying that species in nature, this would simply re- 

 sult in my culling from the records of others for the purpose; 

 and, rather than do this, I prefer to invite the student's attention 

 to what is doubtless the best brief history of Cuculus canorus 

 extant; and I refer to Professor Newton's in his Dictionary of 

 Birds, under the title " Cuckoo." (Part I, p. 118.) In connec- 

 tion with this, and in the same excellent work, under the title 

 "Nidification," should be read what Professor Newton has to say 

 in regard to the origin of the practice of certain birds, and among 

 them Cuculus, of placing their eggs in the nests of other species, 

 to be incubated by the latter, and the young fostered. Without 

 question, the nearest relatives which Cuculus canorus has in this 

 country are the various specific and subspecific representatives 

 of the genus Coccyzus. These are the Mangrove cuckoo (C. 

 minor), it having been taken in Louisiana and Florida; May- 

 nard's cuckoo (C. minor maynardi), also having been collected in 

 Florida (Key West); the Yellow-billed cuckoo (C. americanus) of 

 Eastern North America; the California cuckoo (C. a. occidenta- 

 lis) of Western North America; and, finally, the Black-billed 

 cuckoo (C. erythrophthalmus), also of Eastern North America. 



Personally, I have never enjoyed the opportunity to study more 

 than two of these various forms, namely, the Yellow-billed and 

 the Black-billed cuckoos, but they all are more or less alike in 

 structure, habits, appearance, form, plumage, and some other 

 characters. They all have curved bills ; the feathering of the en- 

 tire head and trunk is soft and blended; the tail and wings are 

 long, giving the whole bird a long and slender appearance; in 

 color they are unstriped, being of a grayish brown above, with a 

 slight bronzy tint to it, while beneath they may be either white, 

 white and buft'y gray, or of a deep ochraceous (C. minor). The 

 graduated tail is also tipped with grayish white, save the middle 

 pair of feathers. The feet are zygodactyle that is, two toes in 

 front and two behind a character that in the entire history of 



