CUCKOO • 425 



in which it was hatched. When discovered, the nest contained two 

 young birds. The cuckoo, blind and featherless, struggHni; till it got 

 beneath its victim, graduall}' lifted it to the edge of the nest, resting at 

 intervals, and balancing the nestling in the hollow between the wings 

 immediately at the back of the neck, till it pushed the unfortunate 

 wren over the side. The young wren was replaced in the nest half- 

 a-dozen times, but always with a like result until the cuckoo was 

 thoroughly exhausted. 



All the African cuckoos normally lay coloured eggs, but when they 

 lay in nests of species with white eggs, their own eggs are also often 

 white. In the case of the golden cuckoo one author states that a white 

 egg was taken from the oviduct of a female shot on the Crocodile 

 River ; a white egg was also found in the nest of a Cape wagtail, which 

 was allowed to hatch to make identity certain ; a white egg has also 

 been taken from the nest of the litttle red-vented tit-babbler. The 

 usual host is the Cape sparrow, the cuckoo's eggs — coloured like 

 those of the sparrow — being often taken from the nests of this bird. 

 There is no information as to whether there are white -egged and 

 colour-egged strains of cuckoos in Africa, or whether the same bird 

 may lay white or coloured eggs according to circumstances. 



Of the great spotted cuckoo {^Coccystes glandarius) of southern 

 Europe, to which incidental reference has already been made, one 

 example was taken on an island off Galway in March 1842, a second 

 in Yorkshire in August 1870, and a third in Norfolk in October 1896. 

 The bird is distinguishable from the ordinary cuckoo not only by its 

 greatly superior size, but by its crested head, and the white spots on 

 its wings from which it takes its name. 



Two other occasional stragglers to the British Islands are the 

 American yellow-billed and black-billed cuckoos {Coayzus miicricaiuis 

 and Coccyzus erytJiropJithaluius), both of which differ from the true 

 cuckoo by the absence of dark barrings on the breast, and by the 

 oval, in place of rounded, form of the nostrils ; the two species being 

 respectively distinguished by the colour of" their beaks. Of the yellow- 

 beaked species nine examples were recorded from the British Islands 

 up to 1900, namely, two from Ireland in 1825 and 1832, one from 

 Cornwall in 1835, and a second in 1887, one from Pembrokeshire in 

 1832, one near Aberystwyth in 1870, one from Lundy Island in 

 1874, one from Dorsetshire in 1895, and the ninth from the Isle of 

 Wight in the following year. In addition to these, two examples were 

 recorded in 1901, namely, one from Somersetshire, and the other from 

 Hampshire. 



