298 Food of the adult Cuckoo. 



insectivorous birds take as food, occasionally, the seeds of 

 plants ; and that the deemed granivorous birds take insects 

 for food occasionally. I remember seeing bread-crumb in 

 the mouth of a dead wagtail : an individual, one of a pair, as 

 I believed, engaged in rearing a cuckoo. Mr. Patrick has 

 noted (p. 285.) that, when bread was given to the foster- 

 parent robin, it carried part of it to the cuckoo. Mr. Turner 

 has stated (p. 288.) that the wagtails applied the proportion 

 of bread which he had supplied to them, along with small 

 worms and ants' pupas, to the feeding of the two young 

 cuckoos, in common, it seems, with their own young. Pro- 

 fessor Rennie has noted, in his Mont. Orn. Diet., that Vail- 

 lant has stated, of the species of cuckoo in Southern Africa, 

 that they uniformly select, as receptacles for their eggs, the 

 nests of birds which feed on insects ; and never those of the 

 birds which feed on grain, although these are the more 

 numerous, and their nests more easily found. Professor 

 Rennie has added that " Colonel Montagu makes a remark 

 nearly similar, with respect to our common cuckoo ; for, 

 among a number which he examined, he found only one with 

 any vegetable materials in its stomach." 



The following facts are quoted from an account introduced 

 by Professor Rennie into his edition of the Mont. Orn. Diet. : 

 — "A young cuckoo, brought to Colonel Montagu, in July, 

 just as it could fly, was, by great care, kept alive till Dec. 14. 

 .... Nothing appeared to be acceptable as a substitute for 

 insects except raw beef. Flies it would eagerly devour ; but 

 its most delicious morsel was any species of hairy caterpillar: 

 these it seized with avidity, shook them to death, and softened, 

 by passing several times through the bill, till they were per- 

 fectly pliant; when it would swallow whole the largest of the 

 caterpillars of the egger or drinker moths." In II. Ill, 112. 

 note *, 243., VI. 83., VIII. 283., are accounts of caged 

 young cuckoos, and of the kinds of food upon which they 

 were fed : these were chiefly raw flesh, raw beef, and earth- 

 worms. A pair of wrens had helped to feed that noted in 

 VI. 83., which a boy fed awhile upon potatoes and oatmeal 

 dough : he subsequently discarded it. The artificial food of 

 caged young cuckoos can but obliquely answer the question, 

 What is their natural food ? Still the facts tend to answer it, 

 especially those from Montagu. 



Materials of the Food of the Adult Cuckoo. — Its "food is 

 chiefly insects, particularly caterpillars, or the larvae of all 

 kinds of lepidopterous insects, and not the smooth sorts only, 

 as some have imagined ; for we have found the stomach of 

 this bird lined with the hairs of the rough ones more than once." 

 ( Montagu, in Rennie's Mont, Orn. Diet. ) Mr. Yarrell, as quoted 



