336 Observations on the Cuckoo. 



which turmoil, its foster-parents continue to feed it with the 

 most exemplary and indefatigable perseverance. It is remarked 

 of the individual described in VIII. p. 286., that " it was seen 

 again on June 12th, on the top of a wall near to the nest; 

 and, while it was sitting here, an amusing and instructive sight 

 presented itself. A thrush, which, probably, had a nest close 

 by, in an adjoining garden, evinced the most passionate and 

 marked antipathy towards the young cuckoo, by approaching 

 it with feathers ruffled, beak open, and uttering an earnest 

 cry : some small birds, too, drew near, as if to exhibit their 

 dislike, and abet the thrush." This I know to be an ordi- 

 nary fact. 



Yet it would appear that, when quite young and helpless, 

 small birds will sometimes take pity upon the nestling cuckoo, 

 and bring it food, as in the case mentioned in p. 297. of 

 wrens actually leaving their own nest with eggs in it to tend 

 a young cuckoo ; but this fact is so very remarkable, that, 

 before it can be considered as general, I think it ought to be 

 corroborated. Those who may possess a nestling cuckoo 

 may very easily try the experiment of placing it near to the nest 

 of some bird which has not begun to sit (or even of one that 

 is sitting, or that has young of its own), and notice the result. 

 I know that many small birds, in confinement, will tend and feed 

 any young nestlings that are put to them, however dissimilar 

 the species ; of which, last year, I had a remarkable proof in 

 a brood of ten young bottletits being brought up by a tree 

 pipit in my possession; but this is a very different case 

 from that of a bird which has a nest of its own.* The sight 

 of a brood of helpless gaping nestlings, however, operates 

 wonderfully upon the instinctive feelings of most birds, even 

 of those which have hardly begun to feed themselves, as was 

 long ago observed by Buffon in his account of the skylark. 

 The Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, in one of his notes to the 

 quarto edition of White's Selbome, even states, speaking of 

 a nest of willow wrens which were in a cage together with 

 other young birds, that " one of them, more than a week 

 before it could feed itself, took to feeding two wood wrens 

 which were ten days older than it, and able to feed themselves, 

 though still very willing to be fed by another. It showed ex- 

 actly the same discrimination that an old bird does in leaning 



* I once, however, put a nest of young goldcrests into a large cage con- 

 taining several insectivorous birds, in the hope that one out of the number 

 would have brought them up : a coletit descended, seemed very much in- 

 terested, and looked, I thought, as if he would have fed them ; when, lo ! 

 he seized one of them by the neck, placed it between his claws, and began 

 very deliberately to eat it. There is, therefore, a little of the magpie even 

 in this tiny delicate species. 



