Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 
watching. In repose the bird looks dazed or stupid, but as it 
darts about among the trees after insects, noiselessly slipping to 
another one that promises better results, and hopping along the 
limbs after performing a series of beautiful evolutions among the 
branches as it hunts for its favorite “tent caterpillars,” it appears 
what it really is : an unusually active, graceful, intelligent bird. 
A solitary wanderer, nevertheless one cuckoo in an apple 
orchard is worth a hundred robins in ridding it of caterpillars and 
inch-worms, for it delights in killing many more of these than it 
can possibly eat. In the autumn it varies its diet with minute 
fresh-water shellfish from the swamp and lake. Mulberries, that 
look so like caterpillars the bird possibly likes them on that 
account, it devours wholesale. 
Family cares rest lightly on the cuckoos. The nest of both 
species is a ramshackle affair — a mere bundle of twigs and sticks 
without a rim to keep the eggs from rolling from the bush, where 
they rest, to the ground. Unlike their European relative, they 
have the decency to rear their own young and not impose this 
heavy task on others; but the cuckoos on both sides of the Atlan- 
tic are most erratic and irregular in their nesting habits. The 
overworked mother-bird often lays an egg while brooding over 
its nearly hatched companion, and the two or three half-grown 
fledglings already in the nest may roll the large greenish eggs out 
upon the ground, while both parents are off searching for food to 
quiet their noisy clamorings. Such distracting mismanagement 
in the nursery is enough to make a homeless wanderer of any 
father. It is the mother-bird that tumbles to the ground at your 
approach from sheer fright ; feigns lameness, trails her wings as 
she tries to entice you away from the nest. The male bird shows 
far less concern ; a no more devoted father, we fear, than he is 
a lover. It is said he changes his mate every year. 
Altogether, the cuckoo is a very different sort of bird from 
what our fancy pictured. The little Swiss creatures of wood that 
fly out of the doors of clocks and call out the bed-hour to sleepy 
children, are chiefly responsible for the false impressions of our 
mature years. The American bird does not repeat its name, and 
its harsh, grating “kuk, kuk” does not remotely suggest the 
sweet voice of its European relative. 
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