Fulton. — The Long-tailed Cuckoo. 115 



but not of the parent Cuckoo, and the young Cuckoo, which 

 was hatched out in due time, delayed his departure from the 

 nest until too late, his size being the cause of his permanent 

 iniprisonment(12a). Mr. Jesse refers to the fact that he has 

 found the egg of the Cuckoo in a nest, where it was impossible 

 for the bird to have deposited it other than by its bill(126). 

 M. Oustalet says, "The Cuckoo watches the moment when 

 the mother quits its nest then, laying its egg, seizes it by its 

 mandibles, passes it into the throat with the agility of a con- 

 juror, and flies to deposit it delicately in the stranger's nest.'" 

 The fact of the Cuckoo carrying her egg in her bill is now 

 generally admitted. If such be possible with the European 

 Cuckoo, why not with our Australasian species also ? Mr. 

 Best, of Branxholme, Victoria, says, " In the season of 1888 I 

 shot a Fantail Cuckoo, and on dissection it proved a specially 

 interesting specimen, as in its ovary I found a nearly perfect 

 egg, and in its gizzard another egg, which, though much 

 broken, was evidently an egg of the same species, probably of 

 the same bird. The season was a late one, and the con- 

 clusion I drew was that the bird had carried the egg about for 

 a considerable time, and, being unable to find a suitable nest, 

 had simply swallowed it. In Tasmania a fresh egg of the 

 Fantail Cuckoo was found deposited on a bare stump. 

 Doubtless it had been laid there by the bird, which was 

 probably disturbed before it could convey it away to some 

 suitable nest "(12). 



There have been a few fortunate observers who have 

 actually seen the deposition of the egg upon the ground by 

 the Cuckoo, who then, taking it in her bill, introduces it into 

 the nest. The most positive evidence on this point is that of 

 Herr Adolph Muller, a forester at Gladenbach, in Darmstadt, 

 who says that through a telescope he watched a Cuckoo as 

 she laid her egg on a bank and then conveyed the egg in 

 her bill to a Wagtail's nest(13). "With one exception, all the 

 Australian Cuckoos are parasitic, and it seems to me reason- 

 able to believe the same of the Long-tailed Cuckoo of our 

 Islands. The occasional supervision by adult Cuckoos of 

 their young ones, and even feeding of them, to which I shall 

 presently refer, has possibly led to the belief thit these birds 

 sometimes hatch their own eggs ; but there is no evidence 

 that this ever occurs, beyond the curious fact mentioned by 

 Sir Walter Buller as to the female bird he shot. We may 

 therefore assume that the Long-tailed Cuckoo, like its Aus- 

 tralian kindred, either lays its egg on the ground and then 

 carries it to a suitable nest, into which it drops it by its bill, 

 or else it finds a nest with a good-sized opening and, settling 

 upon it, lays its egg therein. It no doubt chooses the nest of 

 a bird which is insectivorous, and trusts to Providence, and 



