. Birds of lakeside and prairie . away from the nest, but he was attendingfaithfully to the duties of feeding the youngsters and ofteaching them to fly. The nest with its eggs was on a limbthat had been broken away partly from the body of the the eggs were contained by the few wisps of straw andthe twig or two that did service as a nest was a puzzle. Asit was the mother had to be content that season with onebrood, for a heavy wind broke the limb on which her secondhome was placed completely away from the tree trunk andsent eggs and nest tumbling to the ground. In the same Grand Prairi
. Birds of lakeside and prairie . away from the nest, but he was attendingfaithfully to the duties of feeding the youngsters and ofteaching them to fly. The nest with its eggs was on a limbthat had been broken away partly from the body of the the eggs were contained by the few wisps of straw andthe twig or two that did service as a nest was a puzzle. Asit was the mother had to be content that season with onebrood, for a heavy wind broke the limb on which her secondhome was placed completely away from the tree trunk andsent eggs and nest tumbling to the ground. In the same Grand Prairie orchard I found the nest of ayellow-billed cuckoo, which showed but little more evidenceof a builders ability than did that of a mourning beneath the limb upon which it was placed one couldsee the sky through the nest. There were four eggs in theramshackle structure, and it is a pleasure to say that theyescaped destruction in the storm that brought disaster to thehome of the dove. The cuckoo loves caterpillars. When a. The Reaches of the Prairie 137 father and a mother cuckoo have four lusty young ones in thenest, as was finally the case with this Grand Prairie pair, theywill do more good in the way of caterpillar-slaying than willfour pairs of any other bird species under the sun. There issomething uncanny about the cuckoo. Its movements as itglides along the branches through the thick foliage suggestthe wanderings^of a restless spirit. The bird can make plentyof noise when it chooses, but when it is being watched itusually preserves a silence that strengthens the uncanny feel-ing that its movements impart. There are thirty-five kinds of American cuckoos, so it issaid, but only two of them, the black-billed and the yellow-billed, are familiar to those of us who search the northernfields of the Middle West. In general appearance the twobirds are much alike, the main difference being expressed bytheir respective names. The yellow-billed cuckoo is muchthe more common
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1901
