93 

 ROMANCE OF THE CUCKOO 



E. P. BUTTERFIELD 



Wilsden. 



The Cuckoo belongs to a family of birds which embraces 

 seventeen genera, some of which are to be met with only in 

 the tropical portion of the Old World, the Indo-Malayan 

 sub-region, and the tropics of the New World, etc. There are 

 three species of Cuckoo, in addition to our common species, 

 which have visited the British Islands, viz. : — the Great 

 Spotted Cuckoo, whose habitat is south-western and southern 

 Europe, and an accidental visitant to the British Islands, 

 and, like our common kind, is parasitic, placing its eggs in the 

 nests of Magpies and Crows ; and the Yellow-billed and Black- 

 billed Cuckoo, both American species — the former has occurred 

 about ten times, the latter only once, in Ireland. 



The Cuckoo [Cucidus canorus) is a summer visitant to the 

 British Isles, where it is common, often almndant, especially 

 in some years, and perhaps there is no other British bird 

 with the same exactitude can be said to be so universally 

 distributed as this species, being quite as much at home on 

 the high and bleak moorland regions, wooded valleys, as well 

 as the highly cultivated plains, and no other British bird has 

 been so much talked and written about as the Cuckoo ; and 

 still, "with all the attention it has received from naturalists, 

 our ignorance in many points of its life history is profound 

 in the extreme. But in spite of this admission, it cannot be 

 denied that the mythical element which, in former times, 

 clung to the habits of this mysterious bird, has, and is being, 

 eliminated by more exact observations. 



The average date of arrival in this district (Wilsden) is 

 about April 24th, but the date of arrival, like most migrants, 

 is much influenced by the character of the season. 



In 1879, it arrived on 22nd April ; 1882, not till May 4th 

 which is a late date. It begins to lose its song here about the 

 middle of June, and is usually silent the first or second week 

 in July. One bird, however, I heard last year on Barden 

 Moor, in Wliarfedale, on July 5th, and was in full song. Most 

 of the adult birds must leave here by the middle of July, but 

 the young remain much later. A Cuckoo is recorded in " The 

 Birds of Yorkshire," by one of my sons, as being killed on 5th 

 November, 1902, at Horton, Bradford. 



The well-known call-notes of the Cuckoo is said, by most 

 naturalists, to be confined to the male bird, but I do not quite 

 share this belief. A friend of mine informs me that he once 

 wounded a Cuckoo by a gun-shot as it was flying near an old 

 quarry, and was crying " cuckoo " at the time he shot, and on 



1918 Mar. 1. 



