74 A YOUNG CUCKOO 



that but for that, these would remain unmanifested. 

 Seeing, however, that these exhibitions of violence and 

 strength continue until the bird leaves the nest about 

 the seventeenth day after hatching (I have no 

 experience of them afterwards), should not we regard 

 that pressure as the provocation rather than as the 

 cause of manifestations that persist when the provoca- 

 tion no longer operates? Then the bird was blind, and 

 responded to touch ; now it sees, and to the visible 

 menace of a finger will bring the same furious 

 resentment, the same sudden concentration of energy, 

 to be succeeded by the same exhaustion, pictures 

 taken of it at such times presenting it as a creature 

 suffering and ill at ease, with bill open no longer for 

 attack, but for air to relieve its panting body. 



Thus, when placed on the grass whilst the camera 

 was being erected a few yards distant from it, and 

 when no graver provocation was offered than the slight 

 movements attending the operation, the Cuckoo would 

 rise periodically, slowly and as it seemed with difficulty, 

 the bill open and the feathers puffed out ; and 

 being up, it heaved as if with anger and disgust, 

 snapping toward me at times, then sank down again 

 with the same deliberation, slowly closing its bill. 

 This, regularly and repeatedly done, appeared ludicrous 

 when one compared the irate fledgeling with a man's 

 bulk and five feet of camera and tripod ; but it appealed 

 to one also as something uncanny, so that the 

 fascination of it would cause me to desist from my 

 work, and stand to watch this small creature expressing 

 by its strange gestures a spirit of unappeasable 

 antagonism checked by no sense of fear. 



I spent my last evening in Beaumaris in the 



