THE OOLOGIST. 



169 



tained three newly hatched young, and 

 two eggs on the point of hatching. 



I have never found another set of 

 more than four eggs in my sixteen 

 years of experience, during which 

 time I have collected hundreds of sets 

 of this bird. 



William I. Comstock, 

 Norwalk, Conn. 



THE CALIFORNIA CUCKOO. 



By HARRY H. DUNN. 



One of the most interesting birds 

 of the Southwest and one concerning 

 which there seems to be little known 

 by writers of Oological books is the 

 California Cuckoo. Here it is a habit- 

 ually silent bird, seldom if ever ut- 

 tering the Kuk-kuk-kuk, which it is 

 supposed to give as a signal for ap- 

 proaching rain among the Eastern 

 hills. 



In the east I am told that the two 

 species of cuckoos inhabit both hilly 

 country and the lowlands, high forest 

 and thick underbrush. In this end of 

 California, however, they are almost 

 exclusively confined to the willow 

 groves of the lowlands along the coast. 

 They do not seem to seek exactly 

 swampy ground, around the muskegs 

 and small pools, but rather the thick 

 undergrowth of water-mootics and 

 short willows, where blackberry and 

 other vines have formed entangle- 

 ments, keeping out even stray cattle, 

 let alone weak-kneed oologists like 

 the writer of this sketch. 



The first acquaintance I made with 

 the eggs of this bird was by the way 

 of a small, dirty-faced, bare-footed lad, 

 who, wandering through the swamp's 

 edge, came upon a flat nest containing 

 two large blue-green eggs which he 

 did not recognize. These he brought 

 to me, together with the bird, and I 

 was so placed in possession of a 

 species I had been seeking for years 



and had not been able to see, let alone 

 its nest. The eggs are noticeably lar- 

 ger than those of either of the east- 

 ern varieties, but have the same wave- 

 like markings, common especially to 

 the eggs laid by the Black-billed 

 Cuckoo. As best I could learn from 

 the boy, the nest was placed about 

 fifteen feet from the ground in a dense 

 tangle of vines, growing around a dead 

 willow stump. The bird sat very 

 closely, and at first he thought her to 

 be a Pasadena Thrasher, or, as he 

 called it, "a sickle-billed thrush," the 

 common local name for harporhyn- 

 chus. When he climbed to the nest, 

 however, he noticed the strange eggs 

 and shot the female with a .22 rifle 

 from her perch in a neighboring wil- 

 low. 



All this information was of course, 

 interesting to me and a week later — ■ 

 the first week in May — -found me in 

 the neighborhood wherein he had 

 made his "find," and the net results 

 of six days collecting was three sets 

 of the cuckoo and a set of six eggs of 

 some small rail, which I am practi- 

 cally sure is the Sora. Unfortunately 

 these eggs were badly incubated and 

 could only be saved wih very large 

 holes, yet, in spite of all this they are 

 undoubted rarities in this state. 



Two of my sets of the cuckoo were 

 of three eggs and one of four; the 

 eggs of the set of four are scarcely 

 larger than those of the Black-billed 

 Cuckoo, smaller even than those of 

 the Yellow-billed. The other two sets 

 are larger than any eggs of the east- 

 ern birds of either species that I have 

 ever seen. All the eggs were practi- 

 cally fresh, thus showing that the set 

 was laid in regular sequence (evident- 

 ly an egg a day), and not at intervals 

 of several days, as are those of the 

 near relatives of this bird, the Road- 

 runners. Possibly some of the sets of 

 three would have become four had 

 I left them, but my newspaper work 



