CUCKOO. 97 
rather a contrast to that of the little Wren just named, being 
little more than a loose heap of moss, small twigs, and chips of 
bark and wood. The eggs are five or six and sometimes, it is said, 
seven in number, white, with some pale-red spots. Many of 
them are very like the Larger Titmouse’s.—f7g. 18, plate IV. 
TIT.—CUCULID. 
184. CUCKOO—(Cuculus canorus.) 
Gowk.—Have you heard the Cuckoo yet? How often that 
question is asked by one’s friends or neighbours in the country. 
Hearing the first Cuckoo and seeing the first Swallow are 
always events to true lovers of country scenes and objects and 
sounds. But what a strange instinct it is which forbids our 
Cuckoo to build a nest, and instructs it to lay its egg—at least 
to place it—in some other bird’s nest, and that bird usually not 
one-fifth its own size! A Blackbird’s nest is sometimes selected 
to receive the deposit, but very rarely compared with the Hedge 
Sparrow’s, the Lark’s, the Meadow Pipit’s, the Water Wagtail’s, 
or the Chaffinch’s. How many eggs are laid by a single Cuckoo 
in a season, is, L think, not ascertained. It is, however, a very 
rare circumstance to find more than one Cuckoo’s egg in any 
given nest, and then open to great doubtif both were placed 
there by the same Cuckoo. It is a matter of dispute how the 
ege is actually deposited in the nest selected; whether “laid” 
in, or placed in—after being dropped on the ground suppose— 
by the bill or claws. I found one in the Meadow Pipit’s nest 
mentioned above (p. 69), where the position and site of the 
nest were such as to leave no doubt whatever in my mind that 
the egg could not possibly have been “laid” in the nest; and 
almost certainly inserted by aid of the beak. How the Cuckoo 
H 
