PICARIAN BIRDS. 



only evidenced by its colour and form but by its mode of flight, and which is so 

 marked that the bird is always mobbed by smaller birds, as if it was really a hawk. 

 Its colour is grey above and white below, regularly barred with black like a 

 hawk, while the throat is buff. It has also long thigh feathers, like those of an 

 accipitrine bird, so that with its yellow eye the resemblance is complete, and when 

 flying it is by no means easy to tell at the first glance whether it is a cuckoo or a. 

 hawk in the air. An accustomed eye may at last detect the more elongated look 

 of the head, owing to the long bill of the cuckoo, whereas a hawk in flight often 

 looks as if it had no bill at all, so blunt is the aspect of a hawk's head when seem 



^^ \V\\ 



COMMON CUCKOO {\ nat. size). 



at a little distance. The interest in the history of the cuckoo is, however, con- 

 centrated on its nesting-habits, and the success with which it imposes on other 

 birds in getting them to rear its young. There can scarcely be any doubt that 

 the number of males considerably exceeds that of the females, and some naturalists 

 not only speak of the species as polyandrous, but declare that the female bird does. 

 all the courting. Certain it is that the presence of a female cuckoo excites the 

 interest of more than one male, as may be seen in spring-time by those who know 

 how to detect what has been well-described as the " water-bubbling " note of the 

 female cuckoo, which Brehm renders as kwik-wik-wik, and Seebohm as hwow-ow- 

 ow-ow. The female, on giving utterance to this note, is answered at once by 

 every male in the neighbourhood, and they lose no time in fl^'ing towards the tree 



