COMMON CUCKOW. 



69 



with transverse undulated black lines : vent buff, 

 marked with a few dusky spots : wings very long, 

 reaching within an inch and a half of the end of 

 the tail : quill-feathers dusky, the inner webs bar- 

 red with oval white spots : tail wedge-shaped, 

 consisting of ten feathers of unequal length, the 

 two middle ones black, dashed with ash colour, 

 and tipped with white ; the rest are black, marked 

 with white spots on each side the shaft : legs 

 short and yellow. 



Female rather less, differing in the neck and 

 breast, being of a tawnyish-brown, barred with 

 dusky : wing-coverts marked with light ferruginous 

 spots; markings on the tail and quills like the 

 male, excepting that the edges of the spots incline 

 to reddish-brown. 



The young Cuckow differs very much from the 

 adult ; we shall take the liberty of extracting the 

 description from Montagu's Supplement to his 

 Ornithological Dictionary : " Irides greyish : the 

 whole upper part of the plumage is a mixture of 

 dusky-black and ferruginous, in transverse bars, 

 except the forehead, and a patch on the back of 

 the head, which is white ; and the tips of the 

 scapulars are pale : the feathers of the whole under 

 parts are sullied white, with distant sullied bars of 

 dusky -black ; in general each feather possesses two 

 or three bars : the sides of the neck and breast 

 tinged with rufous : the lateral feathers of the 

 tail, and inner webs of the quills, more or less 

 barred with white : the coverts of the tail are un- 

 usually long, dashed with cinereous, and slightly 

 tipped with white.' ' 



