VI 
CUCKOO PUZZLES 
ROM various places we hear rumors that 
the number of birds that have come this 
year (1916) as summer visitors is below the normal, 
and, considering the atmospheric and other dis- 
turbances which the war has involved, we should 
not be surprised if it were true. But no one who 
had the good fortune to be near Dalmally and 
Loch Awe at the end of May could have failed to 
be impressed with the extraordinary abundance 
of cuckoos. Whatever was true of other summer 
visitors, the cuckoos, at any rate, were present in 
full force. They seemed to be everywhere—on the 
hedges by the wayside, among the birch bushes, on 
poplar trees (whose belated buds were just opening 
into amber-colored foliage), and on the telegraph 
wires going over the moor to Inveraray. The males 
were shouting excitedly all day long—recalling 
Lyly’s “jolly cuckoos.” We listened to him at 
five in the morning telling “his name to all the 
hills,’ and he continued to call far into the night. 
In the midst of torrents of rain we heard the 
“wandering voice,” “at once far off and near”; 
and all through a storm, when the thunder rolled 
in solemn echoes from mountain to mountain all 
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