STRANGE BED-FELLOWS 



the whole of her long tail showing, so I took some more 

 pictures of her, as before. When she left, I photo- 

 graphed the two youngsters in their rude, hard cradle. 

 Ugly brats they were at this stage, with great ungainly 

 beaks, all out of proportion to their size, and bristling 

 with pin feathers. The nest, as usual, was almost flat 

 on top, and somewhat tilted over besides. It always 

 seems a wonder if the young cuckoos succeed in hanging 

 on to the nest. That they sometimes do not, I know 

 for a fact, for soon afterward I found this nest deserted, 

 and a few years before I had watched another nest of 

 this species in the same locality, down by the pond in 

 a bushy swamp. 



This nest also had two small young, which, after a 

 severe thunder shower and wind, disappeared. Their 

 home was a most unusual one. It was in an ordinary 

 situation, six or eight feet up a sapling. But near by 

 in the swamp was a willow bush which was just getting 

 past its flowering by the middle of May, when the 

 cuckoos began to build. Instead of picking up sticks 

 and making a platform so frail that one could see the 

 eggs through it from below, these birds had constructed 

 a big, soft, nest, very deep, though flat on top, almost 

 entirely out of willow catkins and down. They de- 

 served better fortune than to have their young blown 

 out of such a palatial nursery — ^for a cuckoo! — and 

 drowned. But this is the lot of many a young bird, 

 even from the best of bird homes. 



We have two kinds of cuckoos — Black-billed and 



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