YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO* 
By T. GILBERT PEARSON 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 15 
One cloudy autumn afternoon, while strolling along a woodland 
path, I heard a weird, mournful voice plaintively calling for many 
minutes. The sound seemed to come from a cluster of trees on the 
farther side of a glen. After a little time I went near to the sorrowing 
creature, and found it seated on a drooping bough of an old, gnarled oak. 
It was a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. 
NEST AND EGGS OF CUCKOO 
Photographed by B. S. Bowdish, at Demarest, N. J. 
Some of our birds had already departed for their winter visit to 
the tropics, but the Cuckoo still tarried in its summer home. It seemed 
to feel the solitude of the autumn forest, and although its voice is 
seldom heard at this time of year, it was now chanting its plaintive cry 
as if its heart was breaking at the thought that summer was over. It 
was sitting crosswise on the limb, and was motionless except for a slight 
upward impulse of the body every time it called. 
*From Stories of Bird Life. Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The B. F. Johnson Publishing 
Company, Richmond, Virginia. 
57 
