for its eggs (for tMs species has not a hill powerful enough to pierce the green and 

 grnwins wood), the little Woodpecker always selects the remains of a bough which 

 has been cut off, or had its top broken by the wind, and proceeds to bore its hole 

 a foot or so below the broken part ; it is thus almost secure from the branch 

 breaking off at the part excavated, which would be very likely to happen in a gale 

 of wind if the hole were at a distance from the extremity of the branch : we have 

 alway found the nests in this situation. 



The Wryneck (Yunx torquiUa) will lay many eggs. From the nest, out of 

 which the two eggs exhibited were taken, a neighbour extracted 40 in all, by 

 taking a fresh egg each successive day. 



And now for a few words about the ways of the Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), a 

 hackneyed subject in ornithology, but one which we presume to say has not been 

 completely exhausted. The female Cuckoo has the reputation of being a bad 

 mother, and we shall not attempt to advocate the principle she adopts of putting 

 out her children to nurse ; but there are few characters about whom nothing 

 favourable can be said, and next to s\ipporting them herself is the du»y of finding 

 an efficient nurse, who will not be likely to make mistakes about their diet. Now 

 all the Cuckoos of our acquaintance have shown the greatest powers of discrimi- 

 nation in the performance of this latter obligation. Of a large series of eggs which 

 we have taken none had been depo^iitcd in the nests of the conical billed birds, 

 whose diet is of a harder nature such as grain and seeds of various kinds and 

 only partially of insects ; we have only found the eggs of the Cuckoo in the nests 

 of those birds which, like itself, are insect eaters. And here arise two questions 

 ■which have been repeatedly asked, and too frequently met only with ridicule for 

 answers. Does the cuckoo ever transport her egg in her throat or beak in order to 

 deposit it in a suitable nest ? We might suppose that she invariably lays it in the 

 nest like any other bird, but it has long been known that her congener, the didric 

 or gilded cuckoo of Caffraria, conveys her egg in her beak, or rather throat, to 

 the nest selected ; and if we may be allowed to express an opinion on the subject, 

 we should say that undoubtedly our British visitor does the same. We have 

 ourselves on four or five different occasions found the egg of the cuckoo in nests 

 which were placed in the cavities of trees or banks, the apertures of which were 

 indisputably too small to allow the cuckoo to do more than insert its head and 

 neck. The question might, perhaps, be settled by shooting several female 

 cuckoos in May in the early morning, which is the period of the day in which they 

 Usually deposit their eggs, and then proceeding to examine their throats. 



The other question we have heard stated in rather a ludicrous form, in which 

 it can of course receive only a negative answer — " Can the cuckoo lay an egg of 

 whatever tint or colouring it chooses?" Some observers have noticed that the 

 eggs of the cuckoo which are found in the nests of the titlark are of a hue 

 approximating to those of that species of bird, while those found in the nest of the 

 hedge-sparrow are more green, and those in that of the pied wagtail are grey in 

 colouring, and that there is, in fact, a peculiar resemblance between the egg of the 

 cuckoo and those of the nest in wliich it has been deposited. The statement 



