WATSON'S CROSSING. 83> 



The latter, with its velvety bloom of richest red seems 

 always out of place among our plainer trees. Indeed, 

 one spot where stood a thrifty sumac in full bloom, 

 with wild-rice, cat's-tail and purple cock's-coinb grass 

 growing immediately about it, was a little tropic, that 

 needed but a few humming-birds to make complete. 

 There were few birds of any kind in the neighborhood, 

 but while I lingered at the sumac a silent, morose cuckoo 

 flew from the opposite shore and clucked in his peculiar 

 way when once hid in the thickest cluster of the tree's 

 foliage. It was the first of these birds that I had seen 

 for many days, so I followed his movements as best I 

 could, with as much interest as though a novelty. To 

 me, in truth, for years past, it has been a most enter- 

 taining bird. His talents certainly do not lie in a mu- 

 sical direction ; yet the broken, gutteral cluck that he so 

 frequently utters is not discordant ; and further, it does 

 not appear to have been noticed by ornithologists that 

 these birds neither all cluck alike nor is this clucking 

 their only utterance. They occasionally give a more 

 birdlike cry, something like the first syllable of a wood- 

 pee-wee's song. Like all young birds, the brood peep 

 quite shrilly when handled. As to the ordinary clucking 

 of adult birds, it accords well with the surroundings, 

 and when accompanied by the " z-ing " of the harvest- 

 fly, completes the essential features of an August after- 

 noon. 



I am much surprised to find these birds recorded as 

 such devoted creatures, both to their mates and to their 

 young. The mother bird, it is true, looks well after her 

 offspring, but as childless lovers, earlier in the summer, 



