524 Rev. C. Wollcy-Dod — Cuckoo and Swallow 



XLIII. — On a case of a Cuckoo and a Swallow being reared in 

 the same Nest. By the Rev. Charles Wolley-Dod. 



Edge Hall is twelve miles south of Chester, and in its garden 

 small birds have a good time, as cats and bird-nesting boys 

 are carefully prohibited. Their -v^orst enemies appear to be 

 Jays, which hunt for their nests early, before anyone is 

 about, and carry off the young birds. Nevertheless, the 

 numbers of Pied Wagtails, Spotted Flycatchers, and Swallows 

 seem yearly to increase. The garden is a favourite resort for 

 Cuckoos, and a young Cuckoo generally occupies at least one 

 of the Wagtail's nests, and appears on the lawn in due time, 

 waited upon by the old birds. I have often watched to see 

 whether more than one pair of birds took part in the feeding, 

 but I never could make out that it was so. 



About midsummer this year my gardener came to tell me 

 that he had found a young Cuckoo dead in a Wagtail's nest, 

 built in a wall close to the back door of my house. He 

 passed the nest at least a dozen times a day, and had missed 

 seeing the old birds within twenty-four hours. I found the 

 young Cuckoo, about a week old, and of course the sole 

 occupant of the nest. It was plump, and bore no outward 

 sign of injury, and had not been dead many hours. My man 

 was sure that the Wagtails had learnt wisdom by experience, 

 and that when they found what it was they were rearing 

 they had deserted it. But this was rather slender evidence of 

 desertion, and this young bird's fate must remain a mystery. 

 About two days later, it was on the morning of the twenty- 

 second of June, my gardener told me that there was a young 

 Cuckoo in a Swallow's nest in the potting-shed. The "coin 

 of vantage " chosen by these particular Swallows to build in 

 must be fully described in order to understand what follows. 

 The potting-shed, about thirty feet long and eight wide, is a 

 lean-to shed outside the wall of the kitchen garden, with 

 another cross- wall at one end. The other end and half the 

 side on which it is entered are boarded or glazed, leaving 

 open about fifteen feet in length and six in height. The eaves 

 of the iron roof rest upon a horizontal beam, which makes a 



