The California Cuckoo 



Taken in Los Angeles County 



BIG ENOUGH TO KOOK 



little ado or apology as if you were in 

 the next county. But make a false 

 motion, and the bird glides away 

 into the deeper foliage with an ease 

 and grace born of long practice. 

 Silken, silent, sinuous, are adjectives 

 which you instinctively apply to this 

 sober, sly bird, as he steals through 

 the upper branches, scarcely 

 seen, but not unseeing, to 

 emerge at length from the op- 

 posite side of the tree, and to 

 dart away like a little brown 

 arrow into some distant copse. 

 A close study of the California 

 Cuckoo's breeding confirms the 

 opinion gained elsewhere, that 

 Coccyzus americanus is a bird of 



highly irregular habits. It nests in May — it nests in August. It builds 

 a nest on a rush order and deposits three eggs therein all within the space 

 of a week — it loafs and dodders for a month, so that fresh eggs and young 

 are found together in a nest. It lays one egg and attends it devotedly — 

 or five and deserts them. It erects a slovenly platform which would dis- 

 grace a dove — or it builds a sturdy nest which would do credit to a 

 thrasher. Or, again, it does not build at all, but uses instead a deserted 

 nest of some other bird, Mourning Dove or Black-headed Grosbeak. 

 And, lastly, it is a model of the home-keeping virtues, rearing and tend- 

 ing its own as all virtuous parents should; or, yielding to the taint of 

 cuckoo heredity, it inflicts its casual offspring upon a foster mother, and 

 goes its way unheeding. This last trait is worthy of particular notice, 

 for it is exceptional, and not very numerously recorded in the West. 

 Indeed, I am unaware of more than two instances, both recorded by Mr. 

 Antonin Jay: On July 12, 1903, his brother, the lamented Alphonse Jay, 

 took a set of Cuckoo's eggs from a Mourning Dove's nest which contained 

 three eggs of the Cuckoo and one of the Dove; and again on July 14, 1907, 

 he found a nest of the House Finch which held one egg of the Cuckoo 

 and two of the rightful owner. 



As a locally exceptional instance, Mr. Antonin Jay records the find- 

 ing, on May 10, 1901, of a nest which contained three newly hatched 

 but dead young of the Cuckoo, and two eggs of the A4ourning Dove well 

 advanced in incubation. The Dove was sitting when the nest was found, 

 and the construction of the nest appeared to point to the Dove as the 



Photo by Antonin Jay 



II5I 



