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CUCKOO. 105 
the same mode must have been resorted to. So again, Dr. 
Jenner has related an instance in which the egg was placed 
in the nest of a Wagtail, built under the eaves of a cottage. 
The like proceeding must have been adopted in all cases 
where the Wren’s nest, which is a covered one, has been made 
use of; and in fact, excepting in such as that of the Lark, 
which is built on the open ground, most of the nests in which 
the Cuckoo lays, are built in such thick and tangled parts 
of hedges, that it is next to impossible for so large a bird 
as the Cuckoo to approach them bodily. R. A. Julan, Esq., 
Junior, records in “The Naturalist,’ page 162, that F. Barlow, 
Esq., of Cambridge, found a Cuckoo’s egg in a Redstart’s 
nest, in a hole im an old willow tree, which he had great 
difficulty in getting out, the aperture being only about an 
inch wide. The Cuckoo has been seen removing the egg of 
a small bird from a nest, in which she had just placed her 
own changeling, by the same mode by which in cases where 
she could not otherwise, if not in all, she introduces her own, 
namely, in her bill. Cuckoos do not pair, but are polygamous, 
the reason of which has been suggested to be that parental 
care is not required for the young. They are bold and fierce 
birds, and ruffle up their feathers in displeasure at an early 
age. 
”'The flight of the Cuckoo is steady and straight forward. 
At times he may be seen perched upon a rail, branch, or 
eminence, swinging himself round with outspread tail, and 
uttering his note the while in an odd and observable manner. 
The food of the Cuckoo, generally procured in bushes or 
trees, but sometimes on the ground, consists of insects, spiders, 
and caterpillars; and White of Selborne says seeds, but they 
may have been accidentally swallowed with the insects. There 
seems some slight reason for supposing that the Cuckoo will 
eat the eggs of other birds, possibly those which she takes 
out to make room for her own; and one instance is mentioned 
by Bishop Stanley, in his ‘Familiar History of British Birds,’ 
in which the flock of Cuckoos, observed in the county of 
Down, devoured, or at least pulled in pieces the greater part 
of a late brood of young Blackbirds in the nest. The Cuckoo’s 
food being insects, it is guided, one should say by instinct, 
but that its instinct is, as will appear, by no means unerring 
in this respect, to lay its egg generally in the nest of an 
insectivorous bird, for the most part in that of a Robin, or 
a Dunnock. It does not, however, invariably do so, the egg 
