. A guide to the birds of New England and eastern New York; containing a key for each season and short descriptions of over 250 species, with particular reference to their appearance in the field . .83 Ad. — Upper parts uniform brown; under parts white; hillblack; skin about the eye red; small tips of white on all but theinner pair of tail-feathers. Nest^ of sticks, loosely constructed, in a bush or a low tree, orin a dense mass of vines. Eggs, pale greenish-blue. The Black-billed Cuckoo is a common summer resident ofsouthern and central New England and of the Hudson Valley, arriving in thefir
. A guide to the birds of New England and eastern New York; containing a key for each season and short descriptions of over 250 species, with particular reference to their appearance in the field . .83 Ad. — Upper parts uniform brown; under parts white; hillblack; skin about the eye red; small tips of white on all but theinner pair of tail-feathers. Nest^ of sticks, loosely constructed, in a bush or a low tree, orin a dense mass of vines. Eggs, pale greenish-blue. The Black-billed Cuckoo is a common summer resident ofsouthern and central New England and of the Hudson Valley, arriving in thefirst half of May,and occasionallylingering till latein September; itis less common innorthern New England and is absent from the higher andheavily forested regions. It inhabits tangled thickets, plan-tations, and the edges of woodland, feeding on caterpillars inthe thick foliage. In May, when the web-like nests of thetent-caterpillar are conspicuous in apple and wild cherry-trees, both species of cuckoo resort to them, and pick out thehairy caterpillars, which most birds eschew. Each species of cuckoo has two sets of notes, which arevery similar in tone and form. One consists of a series of. Fig. 69. Tail of Black-billed Cuckoo YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO 227 notes like the syllables the Black-billed introduces by a gurgling note; itsnotes, moreover, are more liquid, less wooden than those oftlie Yellow-billed. Besides these prolonged calls each specieshas a shorter call : that of the Black-billed sounds like thesyllables kuk-kuk, or kiik-kuk-kuk, the double, triple, orsometimes quadruple combinations being repeated oftenmany times; the corresponding notes of the Yellow-billedare single, low, dove-like notes, coo, coo, coo, coo. The Black-billed Cuckoo, when seen at short range, maybe distinguished by the black under mandible, by the rimof bare red skin about the eye, or by the small white tipson the dusky (not black) tail-feathers. It has a habit
Size: 3093px × 808px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1904
