  We examine instances of modularity of (rigid) Calabi-Yau manifolds whose
periods are expressed in terms of hypergeometric functions. The $p$-th
coefficients $a(p)$ of the corresponding modular form can be often read off, at
least conjecturally, from the truncated partial sums of the underlying
hypergeometric series modulo a power of $p$ and from Weil's general bounds
$|a(p)|\le2p^{(m-1)/2}$, where $m$ is the weight of the form. Furthermore, the
critical $L$-values of the modular form are predicted to be $\mathbb
Q$-proportional to the values of a related basis of solutions to the
hypergeometric differential equation.
