CUCKOO NOTES. 139 



bird-life, as one might say, where in the sing- 

 ing season the air is shaken with a sweet tu- 

 mult of voices. Here the persevering egg- 

 collector is sure to find the delicately-tinted 

 treasures with which he delights to decorate 

 his cabinet. The butcher-bird, the grosbeak, 

 the cat-bird, the wood-thrush, the brown- 

 thrush, the robin, the blue-jay, the mocking- 

 bird and the cuckoos all like to build their 

 nests in the thorny arms of the haw and plum- 

 trees. All these birds are, in a degree, bit- 

 ter foes of each other, allowing no opportu- 

 nity of venting a little spite to go by unim- 

 proved, but they rarely go to the length of 

 committing any irreparable wrong. True, the 

 blue-jay now and then robs a nest and the 

 shrike may impale a smaller bird on a thorn, 

 but these acts are the rare exceptions in the 

 mating and nesting time. 



The cuckoo, however, must be closely 

 watched by all the rest or it will slip its egg 

 into a stranger's nest. Our American bird is 

 very sly in performing this parasitic trick, so 

 common to the European species, and is 

 guilty of a sin in connection therewith which 

 adds greatly to the ugliness of the main crime. 

 I am led to believe, on the strongest circum- 

 stantial evidence, that the yellow-bill species, 

 at least, not only carries its egg to the nest of 

 another bird, but that it also invariably takes 

 away from the nest one of the eggs rightfully 

 there. This habit is a very curious and in- 

 teresting one. Our cuckoo always builds a 

 nest of its own and rears its brood with ex- 

 emplary care. The eggs it scatters on occa- 

 sion here and there in strange nests are prob- 

 ably the result of over- fecundity, for at best 



