YELLOW-BILLED AMERICAN CUCKOO. 205 



The first notice which appeared of the occurrence of this 

 hird was published in the Field Naturalists 1 Magazine in 

 January 1833. Mr. Ball, of Dublin Castle, in a letter 

 to the editor, made known the capture of the first specimen, 

 which was shot near Youghal, in the county of Cork, in the 

 autumn of 1825. When brought to Mr. Ball by the 

 butler of a gentleman in the neighbourhood, who had shot 

 it but a few minutes before, it was still warm and bleeding. 

 The second was shot at a later period at Old Connaught, 

 near Bray. The Cornwall specimen was the subject of a 

 private communication, and the fourth was shot on the 

 estate of Lord Cawdor in Wales during the autumn of 

 1832. This last example has now, by the liberality of his 

 lordship, been deposited in the national collection at the 

 British Museum, and one, if not both, of the specimens 

 killed in Ireland, were exhibited at the Zoological Society 

 by Mr. Thompson of Belfast in June 1835. 



This bird, says Mr. Audubon, in the first volume of his 

 American Ornithological Biography, Ct I have met with in 

 all the low grounds and damp places in Massachusets, along 

 the line of Upper Canada, pretty high on the Mississippi 

 and Arkansas, and in every state between these boundary 

 lines. Its appearance in the state of New York seldom 

 takes place before the beginning of May, and at Green Bay 

 not until the middle of that month." The most frequent 

 note of this bird sounds so much like the word "cow," fre- 

 quently repeated, that it has obtained the general appella- 

 tion of Cow-bird ; and from being particularly vociferous 

 before rain, it is in some states called the Rain-crow. 

 Unlike our English Cuckoo, this American species builds a 

 nest and rears its young with great assiduity ; but it some- 

 times robs smaller birds of their eggs, and its own egg, 

 which is not easily mistaken from its particular colour, is 



