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Correspondence.



although at the Zoological Gardens we provide them with a certain amount of soft

food, such as soaked biscuit meal.


I am inclined to think Mr. Shore-Bailey’s suggestion that they have access

to some poisonous weed must be the correct explanation of the trouble.


I have known these goslings to die from being choked by eating long grass,

and I do not at all like cut grass for them, but where they have an opportunity of

grazing on short, young grass they should be reared with no difficulty, and their

own parents should be allowed to look after them.


D. Seth-Smith.



FOOD FOB YOUNG CUCKOOS.


Dear Sir, —I have just caught a fully fledged young cuckoo under the nets

over the currant bushes. I do not know if it was eating the fruit or the caterpillars,

of which we have a plague. Would you kindly let me know if it is possible to keep

this bird in captivity, and, if so, what sort of food I ought to give ? Do the young

cuckoos stay with us all the winter, and only feed on eggs in the spring ?


Yours faithfully,


Oxley Manor, Eii.een Staveley-Hill.


Wolverhampton;


July 21st, 1917-



The following reply has been sent to Mrs. Staveley-Hill:


No doubt the cuckoo was after the caterpillars; it is by nature an insectivorous

bird. All young birds, after they have left the nest, are difficult to feed at first;

but possibly, with a greedy bird like the cuckoo, a few lively caterpillars or meal¬

worms mixed in with moistened “ Cekto ” might induce it to accept the mixture,

and then the only trouble would be to satisfy its rapacious appetite. My experience

of a young cuckoo was that it was not an interesting pet; it ate to repletion, then

went to sleep, and started eating again directly it woke ijp. Of course a bird like

that is most difficult to keep clean in a large cage; it should have a fair-sized

aviary to itself, then perhaps it would be morejactive and eat less. The supposition

that cuckoos suck eggs doubtless arose from the fact that the bird lays her eggs on

the ground and carries them in her mouth to the nests of the proposed foster-

parents ; she may also have been seen to remove an egg from a nest in order to

make room for her own, but she is not an egg-eater.


A. G. Butler.


July 25th, 1917.


[We hope the young cuckoo has been liberated. It is by no means a species that

should be kept in a cage.—E d.]



[Note. —Mr. Trevor-Battye’s article on “Devotion,” which appeared in the

July number, was printed by the courtesy of the 1 Hants and Sussex Gazette.’]



