In the autumn it
varies its diet with minute fresh-water shellfish from the swamp and lake.
Mulberries, that look so like caterpillars the bird possibly likes them on
that account, it devours wholesale.
Family cares rest lightly on the cuckoos. The nest of both species is a
ramshackle affair -- a mere bundle of twigs and sticks without a rim to keep
the eggs from rolling from the bush, where they rest, to the ground. Unlike
their European relative, they have the decency to rear their own young and not
impose this heavy task on others; but the cuckoos on both sides of the
Atlantic are most erratic and irregular in their nesting habits. The
overworked mother-bird often lays an egg while brooding over its nearly
hatched companion, and the two or three half-grown fledglings already in the
nest may roll the large greenish eggs out upon the ground, while both parents
are off searching for food to quiet their noisy clamorings. Such distracting
mismanagement in the nursery is enough to make a homeless wanderer of any
father. It is the mother-bird that tumbles to the ground at your approach from
sheer fright; feigns lameness, trails her wings as she tries to entice you
away from the nest. The male bird shows far less concern; a no more devoted
father, we fear, than he is a lover.
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