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America is spared the infliction of this notorious "cuckoo." Its nearest congeners, our yellow-billed and black-billed cuckoos, while suggesting their foreign ally in shape and somewhat in song, have mended their ways, and though it is true they make a bad mess of it, they at least try to build their own nest, and rear their own young with tender solicitude.
As for Scott, he sat on the parapet, legs swinging, fussing with a pair of binoculars and informing the two people behind him who were not listening that he could distinguish a black-billed cuckoo from a thrasher at six hundred yards. Which edified neither Sylvia nor Duane, but the boy continued to impart information with unimpaired cheerfulness until Kathleen came out from the house.
I immediately took this as a text addressed to the pupils, and the principal was surprised to learn that these birds were so valuable. In the Park the sparrow hawks nest in a hollow tree, as do the screech owls. Other most valuable birds which nest in the Park are the black-billed and yellow-billed cuckoos, whose depredations among the hairy and spiny caterpillars should arouse our gratitude.
The ringing "Kow Kow Kow" in the tree-tops was no longer a mere wandering voice, but the summer song of the Black-billed Cuckoo. The loud, rattling, birdy whistle in the low trees during dull weather Yan had traced to the Tree-frog.
Roger cast a quick appraising glance over the shabbily dressed man and walked to the table. Unless someone knew Roger personally, it would have been hard to recognize him. No longer wearing the vivid blue of the senior Space Cadet, he was now dressed in black trousers fitting snugly around the legs, a midnight blue pull-over jersey, and the black-billed hat of the merchant spaceman.
"Wrong again it is a Cuckoo; the Yellow-billed one, I think, for the voice is louder and harsher than that of his Black-billed brother." "What! a little blue and white bird like the one that bobs out of mother's carved clock at home? Oh, do let us try to find it! But this bird didn't say 'cuckoo'; it only cackled something like a Hen when she is tired of sitting."
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.
The warblers, the humming bird, the tanager, the bob-o-link, the ovenbird, the vireos, the chat, the red start, the oriole, the dickcissel, the black-billed cuckoo, all greeted their friends as numerously as ever.
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