21 BIRDS OF THE DISTRICT OF GEELONG 
blue and gold set in a wilderness of tempests, of 
flower-scented bush meadows that the north wind 
will presently turn to parching wastes. The glamour, 
the evanescence, the foreboding, all are there in the 
Cuckoo's chromatic scale, musical, melancholy ; no less 
surely does he speak his message than that other 
grey bird who welcomes the soft northern summer 
with his joyous shout of May in leafy Warwickshire. 
The Pallid Cuckoo is another infra-Australian 
migrant, visiting our district in August and returning 
about Christmas-time northwards : how far north 
he goes is not definitely known, but probably it is 
to Queensland. I have seen a Pallid Cuckoo at 
Batesford on July 12th (1902), a silent bird; my 
earliest record of the Cuckoo's call is August 7th, 
on which date in 191 3 I heard one in the Eastern 
Park, not yet in very good voice. The second week 
in August is, I think, the average time of the Cuckoo's 
appearance in the country about our town ; and it 
is most unusual to hear one calling after the end 
of the year. The latest date on which I have noticed 
a Cuckoo is February loth. That was in 1902, in 
the She-oak Wood near Barwon Heads ; the bird 
was not calling. 
The ordinary call of the Pallid Cuckoo is the well- 
known scale-like series of ascending notes. There is 
another which is developed a little later, just about 
laying-time, I imagine ; this is almost a scream, 
alternating with three or four repetitions of a single 
note, uttered when the bird is on the wing, particu- 
