186 LAND BIRDS 



a second set is laid in another nest, and for this the 

 unfortunate bird sometimes occupies the abandoned 

 nests of other birds. There is no authentic record of 

 her having left her own eggs to be brooded by another, 

 however, and the accusation of parasitic parenthood is, 

 in her case, unjust. It belongs rather to the European 

 species. 



Always shy haunters of the willow thickets, cuckoos 

 are most apt to be heard during the mating season, 

 wliich varies from May, in San Bernardino County, 

 where tliey are more or less scarce, to the last of August 

 in Sacramento valley, although a brood of the latter 

 date, as noted by Major Bendire, undoubtedly was a 

 belated one. 



The only brood of the Western Yellow-billed Cuckoo 

 that I have watched develop was housed in a willow 

 clump in Santa Clara valley. The last of three pale 

 green eggs was laid May 30, and incubation began the 

 next day. For eighteen days the slim brown mother 

 brooded ; and when, at the end of that time, three wrig- 

 gling, naked birdlings filled the nest, her watchful care 

 was doubled. Noiselessly as a shadow she would slip 

 through the low bushes with a cricket in her bill, and 

 during the early hours of the morning one or the other 

 of the parents was en route continually with food for the 

 hungry but silent nestlings. These were fed by regurgi- 

 tation at first, and they grew surprisingly as the days 

 went by. At the end of twenty days they were covered 

 with pinfeathers and looked like tiny porcupines. Sud- 

 denly, on the twenty-first day, these sheaths burst, and 



