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You can't call a chap the world's greatest authority on the yellow-billed cuckoo without rousing a certain disposition towards chumminess in him. "It's a cert!" I said. "An absolute cinch!" said Corky. And a day or two later he meandered up the Avenue to my apartment to tell me that all was well.
And only a few pages later there he was in the limelight again in connection with the yellow-billed cuckoo. It was great stuff. The more I read, the more I admired the chap who had written it and Jeeves's genius in putting us on to the wheeze. I didn't see how the uncle could fail to drop.
East of Simla the red-billed species is by far the commoner, while to the west the yellow-billed form rules the roost. The vernacular names for the blue-magpie are Nilkhant at Mussoorie and Dig-dall at Simla. This species is like a dull edition of the tree-pie of the plains. It is dressed like a quaker. It is easily recognised when on the wing.
It is the note of a bird, and from the sound it resembles it is generally known as the "cow-bird." It is also called the "yellow-billed cuckoo." It is in no respect behind any of its neighbours of the grove in conjugal and parental affection, for it builds its nest, hatches its own eggs, and rears its own young, Wilson assures us.
Look at him through the glass, and see if the following description fits him." The Yellow-billed Cuckoo Length about twelve inches. Upper parts olive-gray or Quaker color all over, smooth and shiny; wings tinged with bright cinnamon, and most of the tail-feathers black, with large white spots at the ends. Under parts pure white. Under half of bill yellow.
But there is always a stronger sense of life when the sun is brilliant after rain; and now he is pouring down his beams, and making sparkles among the wet straw, and lighting up every patch of vivid green moss on the red tiles of the cow-shed, and turning even the muddy water that is hurrying along the channel to the drain into a mirror for the yellow-billed ducks, who are seizing the opportunity of getting a drink with as much body in it as possible.
It is true that the browsing sheep were abnormally black; and the yellow-billed starlings had perhaps less sheen on their feathers than they would have had in the country; nevertheless, for a park in the midst of a great city this place was very quiet and beautiful and sylvan; and indeed, when these two sat down on a couple of chairs under a fragrant hawthorn, Nina's lustrous dark eyes became wistful and absent, and she said,
"The clock Cuckoo is an imitation of the merry, heedless English bird, who lays her eggs in the wrong nests, as our Cowbird does. The Yellow-billed Cuckoo is quite different, being long, slender, and graceful, and a very patient parent even though the nest she builds is rather a poor thing, made of a few twigs piled so loosely in a bush that the pale-green eggs sometimes drop out.
Were man to disappear, annihilated by his own foolish errors, the festival of the life-bringing season would be no less worthily observed, celebrated by the fluting of the yellow-billed songster. To the meritorious rôle of regaling the blackbird, the minstrel of the forest, the Balaninus adds another that of moderating the superfluity of vegetation.
Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery." The black-billed is the only species found in my locality, the yellow-billed abounds farther south. Their note or call is nearly the same. The former sometimes suggests the voice of a turkey. The call of the latter may be suggested thus: k-k-k-k-k-kow, kow, kow-ow, kow-ow.
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