X 



CUCKOOS, KINGFISHERS, AND WOODPECKERS 



BLACK-BILLED CUCKOO; ST. DOMINGO CUCKOO 1 



June 18, 1853. Found the nest of a cuckoo, — a long, 

 slender, handsome bird, probably St. Domingo cuckoo, 

 — at the edge of the meadow on a bent sallow, not in a 

 crotch, covered by the broad, shining leaves of a swamp 

 white oak, whose boughs stretched over it, two feet or 

 more from the ground. The nest was made of dry twigs 

 and was small for the size of the bird and very shallow, 

 but handsomely lined with an abundance of what looked 

 like the dry yellowish-brown ( ?) catkins of the hickory, 

 which made a pleasing contrast with the surrounding 

 grayish twigs. There were some worm-eaten green leaves 

 inwoven. It contained a single greenish-white elliptical 

 egg, an inch or more long. The bird flew off a little way 

 and clow-clow-clowed. 



June 27, 1853. The cuckoo's nest is robbed, or per- 

 haps she broke her egg because I found it. Thus three 

 out of half a dozen nests which I have revisited have 

 been broken up. It is. a very shallow nest, six or seven 

 inches in diameter by two and a half or three deep, on 

 a low bending willow, hardly half an inch deep within ; 

 concealed by overlying leaves of a swamp white oak on 



1 [The black-billed, or, as Thoreau called it, after Nuttall, the St. 

 Domingo, cuckoo being much the commoner of the two Northern 

 species in the Concord region, it is probable that most if not all of his 

 cuckoos were of this species.] 



