Cuckoo flower

“ A floral calendar may be useful as an interpreter in antiquarian problems. Thus p. 12Blomefield [12a] says that “the flos-cuculi, or cuckoo-flower of the older botanists, was so called from its opening its flowers about the time of the cuckoo’s commencing his call.” The botanist referred to may have been Gerarde, and the flower seems to be Cardamine pratensis, known as lady’s smock, also as the cuckoo-flower. Now the cuckoo begins his song (as the average of Blomefield’s seventeen years’ observation near Cambridge) on 29th April, [12b] and lady’s smock blossoms 19th April. ”

“ CUCKOO-FLOWERS (Lychnis Flos cuculi) , or the Ragged-Robin, with its deeply cut petals of rich blue, makes a pretty border plant as it is an abundant bloomer. (See page 214.)
CUPID'S FLOWER. See Pansy.
DAFFODILS do better in half-shade than in full sunlight. The earlier the buds can be procured and planted the better: August is none too soon.
"Late planted bulbs must necessarily lose much of their vigor by being kept out of the ground too long, and the longer the period of root-growth the stronger the flower-spikes. ”

“ It was mainly the fault of the cuckoo, for he was a grumbling, mischief-making bird and used to spend a good deal of time talking to the daffodils. This particular spring he had taken up his abode in the oak tree, and was fond of talking of all the grand things he had seen, and a great many he had not seen, for the cuckoo is a bird of fine imagination; and at last, as I have already said, three of the daffodils made up their minds that to be a flower and live in a wood was a very dreadful thing, and not to be put up with any longer. ”

“ From this day forth the cuckoo-pint holds a curiously-tender place in his memory, and the season
"When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks, all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight,"
never comes round without bringing with it a vision of himself and a fair and beautiful girl by the old house at Springfield, she with white lilies and cuckoo flowers in her hands, and he standing before her, with a heart pulsing with love and adoration. ”

“ Its purplish-pink flowers, found about cold, springy places northward, appear two or three weeks earlier than those of the white spring cress.\ The MEADOW BITTER-CRESS (or CROSS) , LADIES' SMOCK, OR CUCKOO-FLOWER (C. pratensis) , an immigrant from Europe and Asia now naturalized here north of New Jersey from coast to coast, lifts its larger and more showy white or purplish-pink flowers, that stand well out from the stem on slender pedicels, in loose clusters above watery low-lying ground in April and May. ”

“ The Autumnal Squill (S. autumnalis) throws up several flower-scapes before the leaves. Flowers, reddish-purple, not drooping, but spreading or erect; July to September in dry pastures from Gloucester to Cornwall, from Middlesex to Kent. No bracts.
The Cuckoo-pint (Arum maculatum) .
Lords-and-Ladies, Cuckoo-pintle, Priest’s-pintle, Calves-foot, Starchwort, Ramp, and Wake-robin are also names by which this very familiar spring-plant is known in different localities. ”

“ And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo-flowers; ”

“ Even by night they are not silent; but as the season advances the song is less frequently heard, and the cuckoo seems rather to avoid observation as much as possible, the more so since whenever it shows itself it is a signal for all the small birds of the neighbourhood to be up in its pursuit, just as though it were a hawk, to which indeed its mode of flight and general appearance give it an undoubted resemblance—a resemblance that misleads some into confounding it with the birds of prey, instead of recognizing it as a harmless if not a beneficial destroyer of hairy caterpillars. ”

“ Every marshy spot is almost certain to contain a pair or more of them, and their nests are the favourite nursery of the Cuckoo. The song of this species is a pleasing one, uttered as the bird descends from a short flight into the air. All through the genial days of a moorland spring the birds may be watched rising and falling, shuttlecock-like, from the heath and cotton-grass. Then, when the nesting season is past, the young and old join into flocks of varying size and betake themselves to the lower ground, appearing in autumn in large numbers in turnip-fields and potato patches. ”

“ The cuckoo, with its never-wearied song, is the joyful harbinger of spring, and is heard with delight by old and young. It lives chiefly upon hairy caterpillars; and, as it is always feeding, we can justly include the cuckoo among the useful birds. ”

“ As the oaks come out into full leaf, the time when the meadows become beautiful, the notes of the cuckoo sound like a voice crying 'Come hither' from the trees. Then, sitting on the grey and lichen-covered rail under the cover of a hawthorn, I saw sometimes two and sometimes three cuckoos following each other courting, now round the copse, now by the hedge or the brook, and presently along the rails where they constantly perched. Occasionally one would alight on the sward among the purple flowers of the meadow orchis. ”

“ The young Cuckoo arrives into the world without a scrap of down or the sign of a feather on its dusky, ugly little body. Very soon after it is hatched it begins to show signs of great restlessness and energy, endeavouring to throw out whatever else there may be in the nest in the shape of eggs or young. Nature has equipped the little monster well for its murderous task, by providing a hollow between its broad shoulders for the reception of its victims. ”

“ It is very remarkable that nature seems to have provided for the singular disposition of the Cuckoo in its formation at this period; for, different from other newly-hatched birds, its back, from the scapulae downward, is very broad, with a considerable depression in the middle, which seems intended for the express purpose of giving a more secure lodgment to the egg of the hedge-sparrow or its young one, while the young Cuckoo is employed in removing{293} either of them from the nest. ”

“ Unlike most other birds, they do not pair; you all know, too, that cuckoos make no nests, but lay their eggs one by one in the nests of various other birds, such as those of the hedge-warbler, or hedge-sparrow as it is generally but wrongly called, robin, white-throat, and other birds. It is probable that the same cuckoo does not go twice to the same nest to deposit her egg. What a curious exception is the case of the cuckoo to the instinctive love of their offspring observable in almost all birds! After the eggs are laid the parent bird has no further trouble with them ”

“ So thoroughly does it do its work, that orchards, which three years ago, were almost leafless, the trunks even being covered by slippery webbing, are again yielding a good crop.
In September and October the Cuckoo is silent and suddenly disappears. “He seldom sees the lovely tints of autumn, and never hears the wintry storm-winds’ voice, for, impelled by a resistless impulse, he wings his way afar over mountain, stream, and sea, to a land where northern blasts are not felt, and where a summer sun is shining in a cloudless sky.” ”

“ We have two species of cuckoo in the United States, but each of them builds a nest of its own, and rears its own young, although our yellow-billed cuckoo is a very bad nest-builder, and is said often to desert its young, leaving them to starve unless other birds take pity upon them and bring them food. ”

“ The American cuckoo does not adopt the indolent and dishonest ways of the European cuckoo about its nest. It lives in thick woods, and builds a nest of sticks and grass on the branch of some low tree. Its eggs are bright green, and it lays four or five. We are sorry to say that while its food is chiefly insects, snails, and berries, it sometimes steals and sucks the eggs of other birds. There are three kinds of cuckoo in the United States. ”

“ Then on the very day of its birth the cuckoo seems to make up its mind that before long there will be no room in the nest for any one but itself, and actually pushes all its little foster brothers and sisters over the side, one after the other! And, strange to say, the mother bird does not seem to mind, but just gives all the food which her own young would have eaten to the cuckoo, and takes the greatest care of it in every way until it is able to fly. ”

“ The GOLDEN CUCKOOS (Chrysococcyx) , as a most gorgeous group have been appropriately called, inhabit the equatorial regions of Asia, Africa, and Australia. These birds are distinguished by their comparatively small, slender body, long wings, and tail. The beak, which is of medium size, exactly resembles that of the Common Cuckoo; the tarsi are short, and the toes long; the wing is pointed, the tail rounded at its sides, and the compact, large-feathered plumage dyed with hues of more than metallic brilliancy. ”

“ The Cuckoo is one of the most solitary birds of our forests, and is strangely tame and quiet, appearing equally untouched by joy or grief, fear or anger. Is he an exile from some other sphere, and are his loneliness and indifference the result of a hopeless, yet resigned soul? ”

“ The cuckoo, as has been said elsewhere, makes no nest, but deposits its eggs in an alien nest, generally in the nest of the ring-dove, or on the ground in the nest of the hypolais or lark, or on a tree in the nest of the green linnet. it lays only one egg and does not hatch it itself, but the mother-bird in whose nest it has deposited it hatches and rears it; and, as they say, this mother bird, when the young cuckoo has grown big, thrusts her own brood out of the nest and lets them perish ”

“ The cuckoo is the bird that in early spring, when the meadows are sprinkled with violets and the trees are just putting forth their leaves, keeps repeating its cry of cuckoo, cuckoo, in a clear and plaintive tone. ”

“ The cuckoo's life is like that of no other bird that flies. There are no household cares for him; no nest to build, no eggs to warm, no brood to forage for. His sole business seems but to call his own name all day among the tree tops. It is a beautiful sound. And yet there are times when the cuckoo, as much as any bandit of the air, any crow, or sparrow-hawk, or prowling magpie, breaks the peace of the sylvan solitude. He may call all day if he will, without let or hindrance, or the least attempt at interruption. ”

“ Among the family of parasitic cuckoos the standard of beauty is not high. Most of the Cuculidæ not only lack bright colours, ornamental plumes, and other superfluous appendages, but are also devoid of the smart appearance and soldier-like bearing that characterise the great majority of the feathered folk. Thus it cometh to pass that the pied crested cuckoo, although he cannot hold a candle to such birds as the paradise flycatcher or the oriole, is able to point the claw of scorn at his fellow-cuckoos. ”

“ The rather doleful, straightforward repetition of the singer's name is not heard every day; the cuckoo, too, has his moods.
I have heard this bird nearly every summer of my life, and never any departure from the old, monotonous strain, until recently (1888) . Early one June morning, sultry and warm, a bird was exercising his voice in a manner that set me on the alert; it was the voice of a cuckoo, but not the cuckoo's song:
At first thought, it was some bird that had practiced under a cuckoo master. ”

“ It is also noticeable that the favourite is quite a local bird, as it does not extend into the* low part of the country, and hence it is not generally noticed in natural history works as one of the usual fosterparents of the Cuckoo. Another point to be observed is that this bird has little connection with woods, moors being its favourite haunt; while Cuckoos are very fond of frequenting plantations. We have seen in the one case that the egg resembled those of the foster-birds, while that each of the young birds differed in the colour of plumage. ”

“ There’s not one in twenty that you can believe.
The cuckoo’s a fine bird, she sings where she flies,
She brings us good tidings and tells us no lies,
She sucks of sweet flowers to keep her voice clear,
The more she sings cuckoo, the summer draws near. ”

“ Dugmore, till the feathers have grown their full length. Till that happens, the youngster looks as if he were stuck all over with white pins on his black body.
You have heard, or read, that the cuckoo [176] lays eggs in other birds' nests, and leaves her young to be brought up by others. Do not forget that the bird who does that is the European cuckoo—not ours. Our cuckoos build nests, though very poor ones, sometimes hardly more than a platform of sticks. ”

“ Yellow-billed Cuckoo.—Common summer sojourner; breeds abundantly in the thickets on the edges of woods, and is in this part of our country a very unsuspicious bird, as it is not only often seen in gardens, but sometimes breeds in them, in pomegranate bushes, in Banksia and Cherokee-rose thickets, etc. ”

“ The cuckoo family is a large and varied one, with representatives in all parts of the world, and few of them show this extraordinary disposition to impose upon their neighbors, though all are careless home-makers. In the United States we have two kinds of cuckoos, the black-billed and the yellow-billed, which have much the same slim form and plain yet elegant dress as their European cousin, but a different note, uttering a loud rattling cry instead of the soft cuck-oo; and both of these make nests, lay eggs in them, and rear their young as faithfully as other birds. ”