Lew Owen Welty. age 12. of Wichita. Kansas
What is a rain crow?
In North America. we say that spring arrives with the first robin. The English. too. have a robin. But he is no good as a calender. The small. chubby fellow with his orange‑red weskit is a year round resident. He is no kin to our large. thrush‑like redbreast who usually travels with the seasons. To the English. spring returns with the first cuckoo.
Beethoven and Delius have embroidered his soft. sweet voice into music. Come April when the English hear that whoo‑coo. whoo‑coo in the woods. they know that winter is over. The bird of spring has arrived to coax the buds from damp and dripping branches. The stay. speckled bird sings as he flies and he sings in rain or sunshine.
Our rain crow is a relative of the European cuckoo. a member of the family Cuculidae. He may be a black billed or a yellow billed bird. His song is a sad al‑uck. cl‑uck. cl‑uck. cow. cow. cow. But he is one of the 130 cousins that make up the world‑wide. globe‑trotting cuckoo family. He is no relative to the crow.
The cuckoos of tropical Malay are gaudy of plumage and big as hens. Others are drab and no bigger than sparrows. The European cuckoo is.blueish grey and speckled with brown. He looks so like a sparrow hawk that smaller birds often gang up and mob him.
The American cuckoo looks like a lovely. long‑tailed dove. There are two cousins in America. one with black and one with yellow bill. Both are snow white below and brownish above. The wings of the yellow billed cuckoo are tinted with russet.
Our Mrs. Cuckoo is a far better mother than her European cousin. She can build the best nest of the whole cuckoo family. She makes it of stick. straws and rootlets then lines it with springy pine needles and soft lichens. It is well hidden in a thicket. an orchard or edge of a woods. There will be from 2 to 4 eggs. delicate blue‑green and sometimes freckled.
The whole family feeds on insects and caterpillars. Our cuckoo dines on bugs that dine on our crops. Most birds choke on the destructive hairy caterpillars. But even baby cuckoos enjoy them.
Once in a great while. our Mrs. Cuckoo will lay an egg in another bird's nest. Her European cousin always does this. leaving her babies to be adopted by foster parents. She never builds a nest.
Some cuckoos are poor home makers but experts in the mysteries of migration. Once leaves her eggs to foster parents in New Zealand and then migrates. The youngsters follow later. Without any instruction they fly over‑1200 miles of water to Australia. then 950 miles north to join their careless parents in the Solomon and Bismark Islands.