The Vixen thought it best to change the subject.
“What part have you come from?” she said.
“My winter home is in the centre of Africa,” he replied. “A place south of the equator full of tropical forests, where there are lions and hippopotami and a few black people in towns and villages where a white man has never been seen.
“We leave there in March and come north. On our way through Morocco or Algeria some of us stop, unwilling to cross the sea. You can hear us in the forests of Ma’mora and Argan, and in the woods of the country of the Beni M’gild. But the most of us persevere and leave Africa and come into Spain. There the great spotted cuckoo, who is my cousin, stays and spends his summer. He is four inches longer than I am; he has a crest on his head, and white under-parts. He does not thrive as he might, for his wives will put their eggs in magpies’ nests, and those birds are not good foster-parents. My cousins say that the country north of Spain is too cold for them; but we say they are too idle or too cowardly to take the longer journey. We take it, however, making the sea passage as short as possible, and travelling in separate parties.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked the Vixen curiously, and keeping her eyes upon him as though she feared a surprise.
“You see we male birds come first, and the other folk follow,” he explained. “They come about a week later than we do. We all land in the South and go quite at our leisure to the northern counties and to Scotland. One part of these islands is like any other to us so long as there are plenty of insect-eating birds in the neighbourhood. This year I arrived about the 6th of April.”
“Nobody heard your voice before the 14th,” remarked the Vixen, for she knew every sound from copse and woodland.
“We wait for our females before we sing,” said the Cuckoo, “and when our notes are heard for the first time there is quite a flutter of excitement in birdland. Dozens of birds come round to ask us what we are and where we come from; they are in their first year, and have forgotten our notes. Some of the elders want to hear the news from Africa. Unfortunately, the novelty soon wears off. Our women-folk can’t call as we do. They have nothing better than a husky note with something like a common chuckle in it. They try to say ‘cuc,’ and it sounds like ‘kwook’. And now I’ve said quite enough for one day, and I’m going to find some dinner.”
He must have lighted not very far away, for he called merrily and persistently during the next few minutes, and the notes thrilled through the wood, giving to every living thing the assurance that summer had returned at last. The Vixen waited awhile, and heard a mild, meek “kwook-oo-oo,” that seemed to be the confidential reply of some fair lady of the family, then she went back to her earth. Perhaps the Cuckoo had seen or heard his partner and had gone to a more remote corner to call to her.
Through the long nights of May and June the Cuckoo seemed to be nearly always awake. He was quite the last of the woodland birds to go to sleep and the first to wake up. The Vixen would hear his call break the silence of the Heron Wood before three o’clock in the morning, when she was waiting for her lord’s return. It was not always the familiar cuc-koo accented on the first syllable, but sometimes cuc-cuc-koo, and sometimes, though not often, cuc-koo-koo. He was comparatively shy; most of the cuckoos that passed over the meadow, calling as they flew, were hen birds, and it was seldom that he answered their call. One morning in early June, when the Vixen was playing with her cubs in the shaded corner by the water, he slipped through the leaves, lighted on a branch above her head, spread his tail and called loudly, jerking his body with each note as though the effort was a considerable one, and he did not want any of the significance of the cry to be lost.