THE CUCKOO 137 
FAMILY CUCULIDA 
THE CUCKOO 
CUCULUS CANORUS 
Upper plumage bluish ash colour, darker on the wings, lighter on the neck and 
chest ; under parts whitish with transverse dusky streaks ; quills barred 
on the inner webs with oval white spots; tail-feathers blackish, tipped 
and spotted with white ; bill dusky, edged with yellow ; orbits and inside 
of the mouth orange-yellow; iris and feet yellow. Young—ash-brown, 
barred with reddish brown; tips of the feathers white; a white spot 
on the back of the head. Length thirteen inches and a half, breadth 
twenty-three inches. Eggs varying in colour and markings. 
No bird in a state of nature utters a note approaching so closely 
the sound of the human voice as the Cuckoo; on this account, perhaps, 
partially at least, it has at all times been regarded with especial 
interest. Its habits have been much investigated, and they are 
found to be unlike those of any other bird. The Cuckoo was a 
puzzle to the earlier naturalists, and there are points in its biography 
which are controverted still. From the days of Aristotle to those 
of Pliny, it was supposed to undergo a metamorphosis twice a year, 
appearing during the summer months as a Cuckoo, “a bird of the 
hawk kind, though destitute of curved talons and hooked beak, and 
having the bill of a Pigeon ; should it chance to appear simultane- 
ously with a Hawk it was devoured, being the sole example of a bird 
being killed by one of its own kind. In winter it actually changed 
into a Merlin, but reappeared in spring in its own form, but with an 
altered voice, laid a single egg, or rarely two, in the nest of some other 
bird, generally a Pigeon, declining to rear its own young, because it 
-knew itself to be a common object of hostility among all birds, and 
that its brood would be in consequence unsafe, unless it practised a 
deception. The young Cuckoo being naturally greedy, monopolized 
the food brought to the nest by its foster parents; it thus grew 
fat and sleek, and so excited its dam with admiration of her lovely 
offspring, that she first neglected her own chicks, then suffered 
them to be devoured before her eyes, and finally fell a victim herself 
to his voracious appetite.’’ 1—A strange fiction, yet not more strange 
than the truth, a glimmering of which appears throughout. We 
know well enough now that the Cuckoo does not change into a 
Merlin, but migrates in autumn to the southern regions of Africa ; 
but this neither Aristotle nor Pliny could have known, for the com- 
mon belief in their days was, that a continued progress southwards 
would bring the traveller toa climate too fierce for the maintenance 
of animal life. Now the Merlin visits the south of Europe, just at 
the season when the Cuckoo disappears, and returns northwards to 
1 Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. x. cap. ix. 
