Pird-Lore 
A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 
DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 
OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETIES 
Vol. XII JULY—AUGUST, 1910 No. 4 
The Black-billed Cuckoo at Home 
By EDMUND J. SAWYER , 
With a photograph and drawings by the author 
VERY observing bird student knows what is meant 
by the unbirdlike species—certain not necessarily 
uncommon, but hardly familiar birds. Some of 
them are the Woodcock, Cuckoo, Whippoorwill, Nighthawk, 
Chimney Swift, Hummingbird and, to some extent, the 
Brown Creeper and Marsh Wren. There is a strangeness 
F, about these birds, something by virtue of which we are 
\ \G not allowed to pass them with the mere glance we might 
A Vv bestow upon others which, it may be, we chance to know 
\ a even less about. In some, this strangeness is slight and 
vague; in others, it amounts to an air of mystery which hangs about 
the bird like a veil. Of the latter, the Cuckoo is a striking example. 
Wherever seen, a Cuckoo invites our thoughtful attention; there is always 
the same engrossed, preoccupied bearing, always that suggestion, to a greater 
or less extent, of the mystic. 
On June 17, 1909, at the foot of a slight, sandy ridge covered with a scanty 
growth of small oaks, locusts and pines, a Cuckoo 
slipped silently from a small patch of hazel, or 
similar bushes, at arm’s length from me. She 
alighted low in a pine a few yards off, and at 
once proceeded to dress her feathers, giving me as fine a 
chance as could be wished to identify her as a Black-bill. 
There was the nest with its two dull blue eggs. It was two 
feet off the ground, resting on a fallen, dead locust among 
the branches of which the shoots of bushes had grown "™ 
up. Made of long twigs and stiff grass stalks, and with a decided, 
though moderate, hollow rather well lined, it was something more than 
a mere griddle of crossed sticks. The lining consisted of a few green 
leaves under a thin sprinkling of dry, brown, shriveled oak and similar catkins. 
The nest was so plainly exposed from above, and so little concealed from the 
