154 STORIES ABOUT BIRDS. 



eggs in the nest, and we are afraid with truth. When she has accompHshed 

 this feat, she flies away, and drops another egg in another nest, and so on. 



By-and-by the parent birds come back and find the strange egg in the 

 nest. Sometimes they are very angry, and turn it out. But more frequently 

 the mother bird takes it under her care, and sits upon it with her own. 



After a proper time the eggs are all hatched, and the strange httle 

 bird comes out of its shell, and the mother begins her usual work of feeding. 

 But it is a curious fact that very soon her own offspring disappear, and the 

 young cuckoo remains master of the nest. It is, in fact, so large as to take 

 up all the room. 



In the meantime, the foster parents do not seem angry with the behaviour 

 of the cuckoo, but feed it constantly. It requires more food than all their 

 young ones would have done put together. But they labour all day long 

 on its behalf 



When it is able to leave the nest, they keep near it, and protect it from 

 the other birds, which seem to know that it is a cuckoo, and show their dislike 

 by teasing it. 



The cuckoo flies in a swift gliding manner, at no great height. Some- 

 times it skims over the ground, and, alighting on some stone or crag, balances 

 itself with its tail, and begins to utter its note. It can walk on the ground 

 after a fashion, but with no great ease. When on the trees it clings to the 

 branches and climbs among them, searching for insects. It can limp round 

 a bush and peck the worms and grubs from it, and destroy myriads in a 

 very short time. The young cuckoos remain until September. 



The kindness displayed to the young cuckoo by the mother birds is 

 very curious. One day a young cuckoo was put, by a naturalist, who wanted 

 to watch what would happen, into the nest of a tit-lark. There were three 

 young larks in the nest, and when he came back to look the next day, he 

 expected to see the young cuckoo turned out. ]kit a curious scene presented 

 itself to him. The poor little tit-larks had been thrown out, and lay dead close 

 by the nest. Within the nest was the young cuckoo, sole possessor, and the 

 mother tit-lark was hovering over it with outstretched wings, to shelter it from 

 the rain, which was falling in torrents. 



We must, however, not forget to say that when the young cuckoo is about 

 fourteen days old its desire to turn out the other little birds goes off. 



