24 BIRDS AND POETS 



to fit our bird better than the European species. 

 Our cuckoo is in fact a solitary wanderer, repeating 

 its loud, guttural call in the depths of the forest, and 

 well calculated to arrest the attention of a poet like 

 Wordsworth, who was himself a kind of cuckoo, a 

 solitary voice, syllabling the loneliness that broods 

 over streams and woods, — 



" At once far off, and near." 



Our cuckoo is not a spring bird, being seldom 

 seen or heard in the North before late in May. He 

 is a great devourer of canker-worms, and, when these 

 pests appear, he comes out of his forest seclusion 

 and makes excursions through the orchards stealthily 

 and quietly, regaling himself upon those pulpy, 

 fuzzy tidbits. His coat of deep cinnamon brown 

 has a silky gloss and is very beautiful. His note 

 or call is not musical but loud, and has in a re- 

 markable degree the quality of remoteness and in- 

 trovertedness. It is like a vocal legend, and to the 

 farmer bodes rain. 



It is worthy of note, and illustrates some things 

 said farther back, that birds not strictly denominated 

 songsters, but criers like the cuckoo, have been 

 quite as great favorites with the poets, and have 

 received as affectionate treatment at their hands, as 

 the song-birds. One readily recalls Emerson's " Tit- 

 mouse," Trowbridge's "Pewee," Celia Thaxter's 

 "Sandpiper," and others of a like character. 



It is also worthy of note that the owl appears to 

 be a greater favorite with the poets than the proud, 

 soaring hawk. The owl is doubtless the more hu- 



