376 
COMMON CUCKOO. 
shoulders, which assists it in working itself under 
the other young, and getting them on its shoul- 
ders, so that by a jerk it can tumble them out. 
In the American cow-pen bird, we have the want of 
the instinctive inclination and the structure of the 
shoulders compensated, by its eggs requiring less 
time to hatch than those of the birds with which 
they are deposited. 
During the short period of its residence here, 
the food of the Cuckoo is wholly insectivorous, 
and consists in a great proportion of cater- 
pillars, of which the muirs and pasture lands at 
this season furnish a most abundant supply. We 
are not sure of the range of the distribution of 
the Common Cuckoo ; over Europe it is pretty 
evenly spread, decreasing as we gain the north. 
In its migration, it seems to pass to Northern 
Africa, but whether the specimens from Southern 
Africa are exactly identical, we have not now 
the means of ascertaining. Vaillant considers 
them identical, yet says that the African race 
shews several distinctions ; the note of both is 
similar, so much so, as to have nearly cost him 
his life from the reflections and associations which 
it recalled preventing him from seeing the ap- 
proach of a beast of prey. Mr Swainson has 
described a bird from Western Africa very closely 
allied, which may also have been confounded 
with it. According to Temminck, specimens 
from Egypt are exactly identical. The same 
ornithologist records its presence on the Morea, 
in Siberia, and Japan. 
