BIRDS THAT ARE BOARDED OUT 63 



steal another bird's and always rears its 

 young itself; but, what seems rather hard, 

 this kind has another cow-bird imposing on it ; 

 for there is a third sort of cow-bird in that 

 country of which both cock and hen are black, 

 and this one lays in the nest of its brown 

 relation ! This is carrying things very far, 

 for there seems to be no case among the 

 cuckoos in which a parasitic cuckoo lays its 

 eggs in the nest of one of the hard-working 

 cuckoos, though in Africa and India the 

 honest and the lazy cuckoos live side by side ; 

 but it only shows how very remarkable the 

 habits of these parasitic birds are. 



I said in writing about the honey-guide 

 that this strange and clever little bird lays in 

 the nests of other birds, and the birds whose 

 nests it chooses are the barbets, which are 

 birds rather like woodpeckers, and peck out 

 holes in trees to lay their eggs in, as wood- 

 peckers do. The honey-guide goes into the 

 hole to lay its egg, and often has a tough 

 fight with the barbets in its attempts to do 

 so, as they are as big as it is itself. The 

 young honey-guide is believed to throw the 

 young barbets out, not by shoving them out 



