Plate XIV. 
COCCrZUS AMERICAN US— Yellow-billed Cuckoo. 
The Rain Crow, or Rain Dove, as this species is often called, makes its appearance in Southern 
Ohio about the first of May. Rest-building begins a few weeks later, and is usually completed by the 
second week in June; occasionally, however, fresh eggs may be found in July. Seldom more than one 
brood is hatched. 
LOCALITY : 
Wherever woods and undergrowth abound, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo may be seen in the nesting 
season. Timbered ravines and valleys, thickly interspersed with the haw, pawpaw, dogwood and such 
other low trees as a damp shaded soil produces, where the wild grape, wild cucumber and columbine 
grow in luxuriance, are the most frequented resorts. In such a thicket the nest may be built in any 
clump of foliage that offers sufficient support. In more open woods the thorn and the black-haw are 
favorite trees. Occasionally an isolated tree is selected as the building site, and sometimes the bird even 
deserts the country for the town, where it nests among the branches of the street or lawn trees, or in 
the shrubbery of the •garden-plot. 
POSITION : 
The nest may be placed either in a horizontal or perpendicular fork, or upon a number of inter- 
woven branches or stems. Sometimes it is built upon a limb of considerable size, and held firmly in 
position by small branches, twigs, or vine-stems and tendrils about the sides. There is, however, no 
characteristic position. Its usual distance from the ground is between five and ten feet, but sometimes 
it is near the top of a vine-climbed oak or other forest tree. Rests of very low position are generally 
located in the main forks of stunted elms. 
MATERIALS : 
Slender dried sticks, sometimes twelve or fifteen inches long, but usually much shorter, and catkins, 
compose the bulk of the nest. The catkins are generally reserved for the lining, but occasionally they 
are mixed in with the sticks of the foundation. The lining, so far as I am aware, always consists of 
aments from the oak or some neighboring tree, or blossoms from the wild grape. The structure, when 
perfect, is little more than a rough platform, loosely woven, slightly concave, and lined just sufficiently 
to make an even resting-place for the eggs. Anomalous forms are now and then met with, but as a 
rule, the materials of construction are quite constant. The diameter is difficult to measure, owing to 
the irregularity of outline. A circle with a radius of two inches will generally rest upon the top without 
projecting over the sides. The depth depends largely upon position ; when in a perpendicular fork, 
it may be three to five inches through the center ; when upon a horizontal branch, it may measure as 
little as one inch through the same point. 
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