OUR COMMON CUCKOO 



AND OTHER CUCKOOS. 



I. 



BOUT no bird, which in 

 a sense is well known 

 and familiar, is there 

 more mystery than 

 about the Cuckoo. 

 Early poets, who were 

 impressed by two 

 things about it — its 

 arrival almost in the 

 fore-front of the great 

 army of migrants in the 

 opening of spring, and 

 its peculiar call (heard 

 almost everywhere 

 while yet the bird is 

 comparatively seldom 

 seen) — have celebrated 

 it and ideaHzed it. Wordsworth finely called it a 

 " wandering voice," and Michael Bruce, whose beauti- 

 ful poem, like a cuckoo's egg, was by Providence 



