Cuckoos seem to have less individuality than many of our birds; they resemble several of them. They are not unlike catbirds in their quiet, stealthy movements; they are slender, gray-and-white, and long-tailed like mockingbirds; they build nests somewhat like those of mourning doves.

They are shy, solitary birds, that are known by their note rather than by sight. I never heard of any one but Wordsworth and Wilson Flagg who loved cuckoos or called them “darlings of the spring.” The European cuckoo has, however, a very different nature and a more joyous note.

Burroughs is most amusing in his comments. He says: “We cannot hail our black-billed as ‘blithe newcomer,’ as Wordsworth does his cuckoo. ‘Doleful newcomer,’ would be a fitter title. There is nothing cheery or animated in his note, and he is about as much a ‘wandering voice’ as is the European bird. He does not babble of sunshine and of flowers. He is a prophet of the rain, and the country people call him the rain crow. All his notes are harsh and verge on the weird.”[123]

He is, however, worthy of consideration. He is of great value to farmers and apple-growers because of his appetite for caterpillars and grasshoppers. Professor Beal wrote as follows: “The common observation that cuckoos feed largely on caterpillars has been confirmed by stomach examination. Furthermore, they appear to prefer the hairy and spiny species, which are supposed to be protected from the attacks of birds. The extent to which cuckoos eat hairy caterpillars is shown by the inner coatings of the stomachs, which frequently are so pierced by these hairs and spines that they are completely furred. The apple-tree tent-caterpillar and the red-humped apple-caterpillar are also eaten. In all, caterpillars constitute two-thirds of the total food of the yellow-billed cuckoo in the South. Few birds feed so exclusively upon any one order of insects.

“The natural food for cuckoos would seem to be bugs and caterpillars which feed upon leaves, as these birds live in the shade among the leaves of trees and bushes. Not so with grasshoppers, whose favorite haunts are on the ground in the blazing sunshine, yet these creatures are the second largest item in the cuckoo’s diet. Grasshoppers are so agreeable an article of food that many a bird apparently forsakes its usual feeding grounds and takes to the earth for them. Thus it is with the cuckoos; they quit their cool, shady retreats in order to gratify their taste for these insects of the hot sunshine. But there are some members of the grasshopper order that live in the shade, as katydids, tree crickets, and ground crickets, and these are all used to vary the cuckoo’s bill of fare.”[124] It eats, also, bugs that injure oranges and melons, and the cotton-boll weevil in large numbers.