Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 
Female — Has obscure dusky bars on the tail. 
Range — Labrador to Panama; westward to Rocky Mountains. 
Migrations — May. September. Summer resident. 
“ O cuckoo ! shall I call thee bird ? 
Or but a wandering voice ? ” 
From the tangled shrubbery on the hillside back of Dove 
Cottage, Keswick, where Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy 
listened for the coming of this “darling of the spring” ; in the 
willows overhanging Shakespeare’s Avon ; from the favorite 
haunts of Chaucer and Spenser, where 
“ Runneth meade and springeth blede,” 
we hear the cuckoo calling ; but how many on this side of the 
Atlantic are familiar with its American counterpart ? Here, too, 
the cuckoo delights in running water and damp, cloudy weather 
like that of an English spring; it haunts the willows by our river- 
sides, where as yet no “immortal bard” arises to give it fame. 
It “loud sings ” in our shrubbery, too. Indeed, if we cannot study 
our bird afield, the next best place to become acquainted with 
it is in the pages of the English poets. But due allowance must 
be made for differences of temperament. Our cuckoo is scarcely 
a “ merry harbinger” ; his talents, such as they are, certainly are 
not musical. However, the guttural cluck is not discordant, and 
the black-billed species, at least, has a soft, mellow voice that 
seems to indicate an embryonic songster. “ K-k-k-k, kow-kow- 
ow-kow-ow ! ” is a familiar sound in many localities, but the large, 
slim, pigeon-shaped, brownish-olive bird that makes it, securely 
hidden in the low trees and shrubs that are its haunts, is not 
often personally known. Catching a glimpse only of the grayish- 
white under parts from where we stand looking up into the tree 
at it, it is quite impossible to tell the bird from the yellow-billed 
species. When, as it flies about, we are able to note the red 
circles about its eyes, its black bill, and the absence of black tail 
feathers, with their white “thumb-nail” spots, and see no bright 
cinnamon feathers on the wings (the yellow-billed specie’s dis- 
tinguishing marks), we can at last claim acquaintance with the 
black-billed cuckoo. Our two common cuckoos are so nearly 
alike that they are constantly confused in the popular mind and 
very often in the writings of ornithologists. At first glance the 
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