9 o THE RIVER-SIDE NATURALIST. 



year ; and to hear the cuckoo's first note when in bed is 

 woe indeed." 



Where the bird went to was a mystery in olden times, 

 and the old story of hybernation during the winter is told 

 by Aristotle and later writers ; how, in burning an old 

 hollow log in winter, cuckoos would suddenly appear. 

 Thomas Carew writes : 



" But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth, 

 And makes it tender, gives a sacred birth 

 To the dead swallow, wakes in hollow tree 

 The drowsy cuckoo and the humble bee." 



The usual time for the arrival of the cuckoo is about 

 the middle of April. The male birds arrive some little 

 time before the females, and commence at once their well- 

 known call. They are more numerous than the females. 

 These have an entirely different note, more like that of the 

 dabchick, a kind of running whistle often repeated. 



Dresser says : " The note of the male is the well-known 

 call which is generally heard, and consists of two syllables, 

 Uh-uh rather than Ku-kn, which when the bird is greatly 

 excited is rendered Ku-ku-ku; and besides this, it utters a 

 peculiar harsh note which somewhat resembles the syllables 

 Quawawa or Haghaghaghag. The female, on the contrary, 

 has quite a different call, a sort of laughing note uttered 

 very quickly, like the syllables Jekikickick or Quickwick-wick, 

 which it preludes with a low harsh sound." 



From a number of careful observations which have been 

 made in this country and abroad, it is now ascertained that 

 the cuckoo usually lays her egg on the ground, and then 

 with her beak deposits it in the nest she has chosen for 

 that purpose. The egg has so often been found in nests 

 placed in such a position that it would be impossible for 

 the bird to have laid it there, and where she could only 

 have put it with her beak. Macgillivray recorded in 1838 

 an instance of the bird so placing her egg in a titlark's 

 nest ; and Herr Adolf Muller (see Yarrell's fourth edition), 

 a forester in Darmstadt, notifies that he distinctly saw 

 through a telescope a cuckoo lay her egg on tbe bank, and 



