Fulton. — The Long-tailed Citckoo. 127 



sistently mobbed has called man's attention to it ; but, 

 like the Owl, she is saddled with regular habits which, 

 when looked into, prove in a large number of instances 

 to be absolutely false. According to Mr. Bosworth Smith, 

 the Owl does very little robbing of nests at all, and is a 

 cruelly maligned bird ; and our Cuckoo gets the discredit of 

 being far worse than it actually is because of the objection of 

 other birds to its prowling round their nests. The female 

 Cuckoo must place her egg in some nest, and each house- 

 holder is determined that hers shall not be the domicile 

 ciiosen if she or her mate can prevent it. Birds all the 

 world over object to the intruding egg, and often throw it out 

 of the nest, and this is the main reason, I think, for their 

 hunting the Cuckoo. I have endeavoured to disprove the 

 accusation against our bird ; but, notwithstanding a strong 

 opinion on my part that the tale was an idle one, I have haci 

 reluctantly to give way to good evidence. The following 

 instances show that at our end of the world the Cuckoo has 

 latterly acquired mischievous habits, which are, however, 

 not to be wondered at, seeing the continued ill-treatment it 

 has to put up with. 



Many Cuckoos have been seen with fresh yolk smeared 

 over their beaks and necks, and an instance of this was 

 reported to me by a gentleman in Nelson Province(40«). 

 This, of course, is not conclusive, as the yolk might well have 

 belonged to an egg of the Cuckoo itself, which had been 

 broken by the bird in an endeavour to place it in a nest. 

 As a rule the information one gets is only circumstantial evi- 

 dence. For example, the same man says, "My opinion is 

 that they live entirely on small eggs and young helpless birds, 

 but they are so shy and cunning that it is almost impossible 

 to catch them at work ; but I believe their thieving is done at 

 night, as 1 have often found nests empty in the morning that 

 contained eggs or young the night before, and you can hear 

 their scream at all hours of the night "(40tt). " We had a lot 

 of trees in front of the house, and the Cuckoos used to come 

 into the gums at night and scream, and all the Sparrows and 

 other birds could be heard fluttering in the branches and 

 making a great noise "(406). " Frequently in summer, when 

 it has grown dark, we hear cries of fright and anger from the 

 small birds, and then the loud scream of the Cuckoo "(40c). 

 " x\s to the Cuckoo robbing the nests of other birds, I have not 

 seen one in the act, but have heard of lots of instances where 

 nests have been found robbed of both eggs and young birds im- 

 mediately after the Cuckoo has been seen in the neighbourhood, 

 more especially the nests of the pretty little goldfinch "(40c^). 

 " I cannot say that I have actually seen it robbing a nest, 

 but I have seen it very busy about Sparrows' nests in a 



