The Cuckoo 



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Cuckoo spends the winter. From Africa we have ex- 

 amples from the Gold Coast (November) ; from Damara- 

 land (February to April); from Ovampo-land (December); 

 and from the Transvaal (December and January). An adult 

 male from Bogos-land in N. E. Africa shows that by the 

 4th of August the old birds are on their return journey to 

 the south. The Cuckoo breeds in the Himalaya Mountains, 

 and winters in the plains of India and China, as far as 

 Australia. Thus it is found in Pegu from September to 

 February, and in many other southern countries during 

 our winter months. 



On its return to its breeding quarters, which extend even 

 beyond the limits of the Arctic Circle, the female proceeds 

 to execute her parasitic atrocities. That she is the 

 dominant factor in the propagation of the species may be 

 gathered from the apparent polyandry in which she 

 indulges, and in the fact, which seems almost certain, that 

 each female is parasitic on certain species of birds, and that 

 the instinct is hereditary. Thus a Cuckoo, brought up by 

 Hedge-Sparrows, is probably the offspring of a female 

 which has itself been reared by these birds, which have 

 been the foster-parents for ages, until the hereditary instinct 

 of the female leads it always to select a Hedge-Sparrow as 

 the natural foster-parent of its young. One difficulty 

 arises in this connection, viz. that up to the present I have 

 never heard of a blue Cuckoo's egg being found in the 

 Hedge-Sparrow's nest, as it ought to be if the theory 

 holds good that the Cuckoo always selects the nest of a 

 bird whose eggs resemble the one she has laid. On the 

 other hand, I once asked a lady in whose garden more 

 than one young Cuckoo was reared every year by Hedge- 

 Sparrows, what colour the Cuckoo's egg was, and she 

 unhesitatingly replied that it was blue like the eggs of the 

 foster-parents. All the eggs that we have in the British 

 Museum, taken in Hedge-Sparrows' nests, are mottled 



