BIRDS OF THE PASTURE AND FOREST. 143 



His note is not strictly musical, yet we all listen to the 

 first sound of his voice with as much pleasure as to that 

 of the Bluebird or Song-Sparrow. I have not met a per- 

 son who was not delighted to hear it: It may be called, 

 figuratively, one of the picturesque sounds in Nature, re- 

 minding us of the resurrection of the long-hidden charms 

 of the season. The Cuckoo is swift in his flight, which 

 resembles that of a Dove so much that I have often mis- 

 taken them. In plumage and general shape this bird is 

 like the Eed-Thrush, with some mixture of olive. 



THE COWBIRD. 



Young nest-hunters, who are persistent in tlieir enter- 

 prises, and who pursue their occupation partly from ra- 

 tional curiosity and not from mere wantonness, are often 

 surprised on finding in the nest of some small bird a sin- 

 gle egg larger than others in the same nest. In my own 

 days of academic truancy, I found this superfluous egg 

 most frequently in Sparrows' nests. It was not until I 

 had made a large collection of eggs that I discovered the 

 parentage of the odd ones. These eggs were generally 

 speckled ; but I occasionally found a large bluish egg 

 among others of the same color, and supposed they must 

 contain two yolks, save that birds in a wild state seldom 

 produce such monstrosities. Can it be that the Ameri- 

 can Cuckoo occasionally follows the instincts of his Euro- 

 pean congener ? In each case I considered the spurious 

 eggs as lawful plunder, since they were an imposition 

 practised upon the owner of the nest either by some 

 unknown bird or by the Cowbird, a member of a family 

 which are too aristocratic to rear their own offspring. 

 But as a politician of the speculative class I feel a 

 peculiar interest in the Cowbird, as affording me an op- 

 portunity of understanding the system of free love, a§ 

 exemplified in the habits of this species. 



