202 BIRDS. 



frontispiece to Dixon's 'Eural Bird Life.' I liave often 

 wondered — and I ask no credit for the originality of a 

 fancy that must have struck hundreds of others — what on 

 earth the cuckoo would have done if her egg had been large 

 in proportion to herself. She would have built a nest, un- 

 questionably, like some of her relatives in distant contin- 

 ents, for, not being by any means a fighting bird — you may 

 see even the male driven out of the neighbourhood by a 



few small finches that mob him, probably under the im- 

 pression that he is a hawk ^ — she w^ould never dare to in- 

 trude her unwelcome eggs and young on foster-parents 

 strong enough to warn her ofi" the premises. As it is, the 

 young stowaway grows so rapidly that it is able in three 

 or four days to edge the other young out of the nest and 



^ The cuckoo bears, on the wing at anj' rate, a slight resemblance to 

 a hawk, which is thought by some, added to the fact of its leaving 

 these shores at the season when birds of prey are much in evidence, 

 to account for the rustic notion that the cuckoo turns into a hawk 

 in winter. 



