134 Bird - Lore 
under siege. After a while the food was missing; apparently she had swallowed 
it, having decided that her young could wait a few hours longer, since the enemy 
seemed inclined to stay awhile. The nestlings were never fed while I was about, 
nor did their parents once exhibit the least impatience. 
The actions of these birds are characterized by a peculiar gliding quality. 
Extremely slender and graceful, they move among the close-growing branches 
with remarkable ease and speed. The eye can scarcely 
follow these motions. It is well nigh impossible to tell 
whether the bird moves most by the aid of wings, tail, 
or feet. The long tail is closely folded, in progressing 
among the branches, and seems to act just like the 
“shaft of an arrow in sustaining its owner’s 
flight, if that elusive sliding through space can 
properly be so called. For the most part, it 
is only in quick turns and in sudden reaches 
far out or abruptly down from a perch that the tail is somewhat expanded. 
The bird assumes no special pose in calling, but, the feathers of the throat 
and upper breast being much expanded in this act, the Cuckoo has, in some 
positions especially, an odd or ludicrous appearance while sounding his strange 
notes. There is nothing bird-like about this sound. Usually heard from a 
hidden source, one might imagine a boy, hidden in the thicket, experimenting 
with a “devil’s fiddle” made from a thin wooden box instead of a tin can. Nor. 
is the unnatural element much lessened by catching the bird in the act; there 
he sits, apparently in a brown study, dispassionately voicing in those weird 
kuk-kuks the meditations of a hidden mind. 
It is questionable if any degree of familiarity possible with the Black-billed 
Cuckoo would dispel this atmosphere of secrecy in which he seems ever to 
move and have his being. In the presence of this strange character, I can well 
believe one might make a life study of the species, and still perceive that same 
haunting inscrutability. 
About July 6, the nest was empty. I had learned a little—a very little— 
of Black-bill ways; I had seen a good many, possibly nearly all, of his poses, 
and made some fifty distinct sketches of them. But the Cuckoo I had sought 
to know and had hoped to think of henceforth, with the Robin, Oriole and 
Song Sparrow, as an intimate acquaintance, remained a Cuckoo still—a 
recluse, a forbidding, hidden character. 
