192 BRITISH BIRDS 



legs, and barred plumage of a hawk. This fierce, predacious aspect 

 is deceptive : he is a timid bird, with the cHmbing feet of the wood- 

 pecker and wryneck. Strangest of all, the female has the habit of 

 placing her eggs in other birds' nests, forgetting her mother- 

 hood, a proceeding which, being contrary to nature's use, seems 

 unnatural. It reads like a tale from the • Thousand and One Nights,' 

 in which we sometimes encounter human beings, good, or bad, or 

 merely fantastic, who wander about the world disguised as birds. 

 Only when we see and handle the cuckoo's egg placed in the hedge- 

 sparrow's, or pipit's, or wagtail's nest, when we see the large 

 hawk-like young cuckoo being fed and tenderly cared for by its 

 diminutive foster-parent, do we realise the extraordinary nature of 

 such an instinct. In spite of this * naughtiness ' of the cuckoo, to 

 speak of it in human terms, it is to all a favourite, * the darling of 

 the year,' and from the days when the oldest known English lyric 

 was written — 



Summer is icumen iu, 

 Loud sing cuckoo, 



to the present time the poets have found inspiration in his jQuting 

 call ; and musicians, too, owing to that imique quaUty of his voice 

 which makes it imitable and harmonious with human music, vocal 

 and instrumental. 



The cuckoo does not usually arrive in this country before the 

 middle of April, but he is sometimes two, and even three weeks 

 earlier. The males arrive first, and it is they that utter the weU- 

 known double call that gives the bird its name. The cry of the 

 female, a curious prolonged bubbling sound, is heard less frequently. 



One of the strangest facts in the strange history of this bird is 

 that its egg is not laid in the nest in which it is found, but is carried 

 by the cuckoo in her bill and placed there. It is very small for so 

 large a bird, although much larger, in most cases, than the eggs 

 it is placed with, as its favourite nests in this country are all of 

 small birds — the hedge-sparrow, reed-warbler, pied wagtail, and 

 meadow-pipit. The eggs are very variable, being dull greenish or 

 dull reddish grey, with spots and mottlings of a deeper shade. In 

 some instances the cuckoo's egg resembles in colour the eggs it is 

 placed with, and it is thought by some naturaUsts that the female 

 cuckoo invariably deposits her eggs in the nests of one species. As 

 a rule, only one egg is laid in a nest, and a few days after the eggs 

 are hatched the young cuckoo gets rid of his foster-brothers by 



