[82] Length 13 inches, expanse 16¹⁄₂, flexure 5⁴⁄₁₀, tail 5¹⁄₂, rictus 1²⁄₁₀, tarsus 1, middle toe 1. All our Cuckoos but the present are permanent residents; this is but a summer visitor. Nor is it at any time very common, a few only taking up their abode with us, while their brethren continue their vernal migration from the southern to the northern continent. In the “Notes of a Year,” before quoted, Mr. Hill has the following observations on this species. “The visit of the May-bird is one of the precursors of the spring rains in this island. The hazy atmosphere which precedes the showers of the vernal season, has already dimmed the usual lustre of the sky; the winds have ceased; the heat has begun to be irritably oppressive; the air to assume a steamy denseness, hot and heavy; the butterflies have left the parched and blighted pastures to congregate wherever they can find any kind of moisture, and the insects to attract the Nightjars to the lowlands, when the stuttering voice of this Yellow-billed Cuckoo is heard among the prognostics of the coming rain. “The May-bird, unlike the other Cuckoos with us, that never migrate, prefers straggling trees by the wayside to hedgerow thickets. With the first rain that falls, the hedge-trees, cleared of their dust, have begun to put forth fresh foliage, and to form those closer bowers favourable to the shy and solitary habits of this bird. It is [comparatively] long-winged, and its swift arrowy flight might be mistaken for that of some of the wild-pigeons. It ranges excursively, and flies horizontally with a noiseless speed, dropping on the topmost stems of trees, or descending into the middlemost branches. When alighting, it betrays its presence by a sound like the drawling _cuck-cuck-cuck_ of a sauntering barn-door fowl.” One which was slightly wounded, on being put into a cage with some Pea-doves, began to attack them by munching out their feathers. It was therefore placed by itself, when it sat moody and motionless; attempting occasionally, however, to seize cockroaches which were put in to it, and biting spitefully at the hand when approached. In skinning this bird, an operation very difficult from the tenderness of the skin, my attention was called to a number of Entozoa, which were writhing about on the surface of the sclerotica of the eyes, within the orbit. They were very active, about half an inch long, and as thick as a horse-hair. Under a lens, they appeared whitish, pellucid, cylindrical, but tapered at each end; the intestinal canal distinctly visible, much corrugated and in motion. There were traces of transverse wrinkles. Sam informed me that he had observed them once before in the eyes of the same species. BLACK-EARED CUCKOO.[83] _Coccyzus seniculus._ _Cuculus seniculus_, +Linn.+—Aud. pl. 169. _Erythrophrys seniculis_, +Sw.+