181 
The Click oos: The Long-tailed Cuckoo 
I am the offspring of the bronze cuckoo, 
Of the long-tailed cuckoo, 
Left here for the white-head to feed. 
The call of the long-tailed cuckoo is a loud, shrill whistle, 
slurred upwards, like the call of the green linnet, but very 
much louder and more intense. The usual cry is as (1). It 
is louder and more piercing than any other bird-voice in the 
bush, with a rapid crescendo on the sustained note, and a 
gradual diminuendo as it slurs deliberately upwards. In 
wheet wheet wheet wheet wheet wheet wheet 
quality the note is a whistle, and it burrs shrilly as though the 
bird had a pea in its larynx. The cry may vary in interval 
and pitch, and may be followed by other notes, as in (2), the 
whole of which took about two seconds, the notes vocalized 
ivheet wheet being very incisive. Whilst two birds were 
circling in the air, wheet wheet wheet was repeated quickly, four 
wheets a second, manv times at intervals. 
Soon after daybreak, about 4 o'clock in January, 1911, one 
called tiueet many times, as if to another, slurring from / up 
to b flat; and receiving no reply, would call twiuu, slurred down 
from b to f, very sharply, as if with impatience; then go on with 
tiueet again for a time, then an impatient twiuu, and so on. I 
heard no response. It cries out at all hours of the night as well 
as the day; more than once I have heard the first call of the 
season at or after midnight. I have heard no notes from the 
long-tailed cuckoo that could be called a song, though both Yates 
and Taylor attributed song to it. “This bird,” writes Yates 
(YN, p. 64) “ is one of the sweetest songsters of the wood; but 
it is only seen or heard for about four months, in the height of 
summer.” This probably refers to the 'wharauroa. He con¬ 
tinues, “It secures itself, during the winter months, among 
stones, or in the holes of the puriri-tree; and does not leave its 
retreat till all danger of its being overtaken with cold is passed 
