392 cucuLiD^. 



Cuckows indeed have been not unfrequently shot as they 

 were carrying a Cuckow's egg, presumably their own, in 

 their bill* — a fact which has probably given rise to the belief 

 that they suck the eggs of other birds. The testimony in 

 favour of this belief proves on examination to be very weak, f 

 but it has doubtless been fostered by imperfect observation 

 of circumstances the true explanation of which seems to 

 have been first supplied by the late Mr. Rowley. This 

 gentleman, who for a while made the Cuckow his particular 

 study and had much experience of its habits, declared (Ibis, 

 18G5, p. 186) as one of the results of his investigations that 

 the hen Cuckow seldom succeeds in introducing her egg 

 into another bird's nest without the act being resented, and 

 consequently without using more or less violence and engag- 

 ing in a scuffle, of which traces often remain. It would 

 therefore appear that we may justifiably suppose that the 

 Cuckow ordinarily, when inserting her egg, excites the fury 

 (already stimulated by her Hawk-like aspect) of the owners 

 of the nest by breaking, turning out of it, or even carrying 

 off from it one or some of the eggs that may have been 

 already laid therein, and this induces the dupe to brood all 

 the more eagerly what is left to her. As to the assertion 

 that the Cuckow herself takes any further interest in the 

 fate of the egg she has foisted upon her dupe, or in the 

 future welfare of its product, there is really no evidence 



* The earliest instance of this in Britain seems to be that observed by Kinahan 

 and Prof. Haughton as reported by Thompson (B. Irel. iii. p. 442). Another 

 was soon after recorded by Mr. Harper (Zool. p. 3145) who saw a Cuckow flying 

 with something between its mandibles. He followed and reached within twenty 

 yai'ds of it as it crawled like a Parrot by the side of a drain in a meadow. Then 

 it stopped and he shot it, when he found the substance he had noticed in its bill 

 to be its egg. Le Vaillant, however, seems to have been the first to discover this 

 interesting fact, not indeed in our own species, but in the South- African " Coucou 

 Didric " — the Lamprococcyx ciqircus or Chalcites aureus of authors — a bird of 

 like parasitic habits, two females of which he says (Ois. d'Afrique, v. pp. 47, 48) 

 were shot by himself and his Hottentot Klaas, as they were carrying one of their 

 eggs in their bill. 



t Hoy, it is true, says (Mag. N. H. v. p. 278) that he detected a Cuckow 

 flying away from a Wagtail's nest with one of that bird's eggs in its bill, after 

 having left an egg of its own in exchange for the one taken. Other ornitholo- 

 gists have given similar evidence, but there is nothing to prove that the Cuckow 

 meant to swallow its spoil. 



