FAMILY CARES— NURSERY DUTIES. 165 



the same fostering care. In course of time we thus 

 get a '^ gens" of shrike-reared cuckoos, another 

 of robin or wag-tail, reared, and so on. 



The same cuckoo will return year after year 

 to the same locality to lay, and will permit no 

 other of its species to share her territory, not 

 even such of her own offspring — should she 

 recognise them — as were born there the year 

 previously. 



If we feel that this desire to shirk the responsi- 

 bilities of parentage is somewhat reprehensible 

 what shall we say of the young, when we learn 

 that its earliest act, before it has seen the light 

 of day — for it is born blind — is murder ! The 

 story of the deliberate, relentless fashion with 

 which this is carried out has been graphically 

 told by Mrs Hugh Blackburn as follows : " The 

 nest (which we watched last June after finding 

 the cuckoo egg in it) was that of the common 

 meadow-pipit (titlark, moss-cheeper), and had 

 two pipit's eggs besides that of the cuckoo. It 

 was below a heather bush on the declivity of 

 a low abrupt bank on a highland hillside in 

 Moidart. 



"At one visit the pipits were found to be 

 hatched, but not the cuckoo. At the next visit, 

 which was after an interval of forty-eight hours, 

 we found the young cuckoo alone in the nest, 

 and both the young pipits lying down the bank, 

 about ten inches from the margin of the nest, 

 but quite lively after being warmed in the hand. 

 They were replaced in the nest beside the cuckoo, 

 which struggled about until it got its back under 

 one of them, when it climbed backwards directly 



