BIRDS THAT ARE BOARDED OUT 53 



grown up into a bird several times as big as 

 themselves and looking suspiciously like the 

 hated hawk, they have got so used to him 

 that they never notice points of that kind. 



Another very strange thing is the power 

 that the young cuckoo has of exciting the 

 sympathy of birds that have not brought him 

 up, even if they can never have seen such a 

 bird before. Not only will British birds 

 feed a strange young cuckoo, but a case 

 happened some time ago at the Zoo in which 

 a black tanager a small bird from South 

 America, a country where there are no parasitic 

 cuckoos squeezed through the bars of a 

 parrot-cage in which a young common cuckoo 

 was being kept, inside the aviary, and fed it 

 there. 



There has long been an idea that the 

 cuckoo's egg is apt to be like those of the birds 

 in whose nests it is placed, but this does not 

 hold good in every case, by any means. The 

 cuckoo's egg varies a great deal, and on the 

 whole is more like the skylark's than any other 

 British bird's ; but then the cuckoo does not 

 particularly favour the skylark's nest, and, 

 though its egg is a fairly good match for the 



