There are many cuckoos in the world, and in some countries it would be possible to see three or four, or even half a dozen, distinct species in the course of a single day. We have but one, and have made much of it. ‘Perhaps no bird,’ says Yarrell, ‘has attracted so much attention, while of none have more idle tales been told.’ And he might have added, that of no other bird so much remains to be known. Our cuckoo interests us in two distinct ways: he charms us, and he affects the mind with his strangeness. He is a visitor of the early spring, with a far-reaching, yet soft and musical, voice, full of beautiful associations, prophetic of the flowery season. To quote Sir Philip Sidney’s words, applying them to a feathered instead of to a human troubadour: ‘He cometh to you with a tale to hold children from their play and old men from the chimney-corner.’ Seen, this melodist has the bold figure, rough, feathered legs, and barred plumage of a hawk. This fierce, predacious aspect is deceptive: he is a timid bird, with the climbing feet of the woodpecker and wryneck. Strangest of all, the female has the habit of placing her eggs in other birds’ nests, forgetting her motherhood, a proceeding which, being contrary to nature’s use, seems unnatural. It reads like a tale from the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ in which we sometimes encounter human beings, good, or bad, or merely fantastic, who wander about the world disguised as birds. Only when we see and handle the cuckoo’s egg placed in the hedge-sparrow’s, or pipit’s, or wagtail’s nest, when we see the large hawk-like young cuckoo being fed and tenderly cared for by its diminutive foster-parent, do we realise the extraordinary nature of such an instinct. In spite of this ‘naughtiness’ of the cuckoo, to speak of it in human terms, it is to all a favourite, ‘the darling of the year,’ and from the days when the oldest known English lyric was written-- Summer is icumen in, Loud sing cuckoo, to the present time the poets have found inspiration in his fluting call; and musicians, too, owing to that unique quality of his voice which makes it imitable and harmonious with human music, vocal and instrumental. The cuckoo does not usually arrive in this country before the middle of April, but he is sometimes two, and even three weeks earlier. The males arrive first, and it is they that utter the well-known double call that gives the bird its name. The cry of the female, a curious prolonged bubbling sound, is heard less frequently.