THE CUCKOO 
in a volume like the present. I have written much on 
the Cuckoo, for its life-history has always had a special 
interest for me, and I would refer readers to my several 
books, where much of the bird’s economy'has been dis- 
cussed. ‘The eggs of this species, I need scarcely repeat, 
are laid in the nests of some small insect-feeding bird, 
that acts the part of foster-parent, hatching them and 
tending the young Cuckoo until it can forage for itself. 
The eggs are laid during the latter half of May and the 
beginning of June, the birds pairing in due course. It is 
still an undecided question how many eggs each female 
lays during the season, possibly from five to eight, each 
being deposited on the ground first and then carried in 
the mouth and placed in the selected nest. “They vary a 
good deal in colour, and are remarkably small for the size 
of the parent. ‘They often, but by no means invariably, 
resemble those in the nest of the selected species. The 
most frequent type is greyish or greenish white, spotted, 
speckled, and blotched with various shades of reddish 
and olive brown, intermingled with a few specks of dark 
brown. ‘The Cuckoo leaves us in August and September. 
The adult Cuckoo has the general colour of the upper 
parts slate-grey ; the wings are brown, barred on the 
inner webs with white ; the tail is dull black, tipped with 
white and obscurely barred with the same; the throat and 
breast are pale grey, the remainder of the under parts 
greyish white barred with brown. Bill black, yellow at 
the edges ; tarsiand toes yellow; orbits and irides yellow. 
Length 14 inches. The nestling has the upper parts 
brown barred with rufous and spotted with white, the 
under parts pale brown barred with darker brown. It is 
nearly two years before the fully adult dress is assumed, 
but a description of the intermediate phases, which are 
very complicated, would require more space than can 
be assigned here. 
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