REARING OF YOUNG CUCKOOS 141 



who have ever been able to make a similar 

 complaint. 



It is strange how entirely those birds, in whose 

 nest a cuckoo's egg has been deposited, neglect 

 their own offspring for the non-paying guest 

 which has been foisted upon them. All their 

 energies are devoted to the feeding and rearing of 

 the young giant. One by one their own chicks 

 are turned out of the nest, and the poor deluded 

 parents are kept incessantly at work to provide 

 food for the newcomer.* The amount of food a 

 young cuckoo can consume in the twenty-four 

 hours is simply appalling, and his growth is pro- 

 portionate. At last he becomes too big for the 

 nest, and so props himself up outside it ; not in- 

 frequently he tumbles out of it altogether, a 

 hideous, piteous monster for ever squalling for more 

 food. Like the daughters of the horse-leech, his 

 cry is ever, ' Give, give ' ; and he gets it, too, for 

 should his foster parents fail to feed him, other 

 birds will do so. One of these stray ogres, which 

 had tumbled out of the nest, was seen to be fed by 

 a thrush, and yet the thrush is one of those birds 

 in whose nest the egg of the cuckoo is never 

 found. The hedge-sparrow, robin, redstart, 

 whitethroat, willow and sedge warblers, wagtail, 

 pipit, skylark, yellow-hammer, chaffinch, green- 



* Saunders, in his work on British birds, states that Mr. 

 Hancock saw the nestling cuckoo begin to eject the young of 

 the hedge-sparrow when the former had only been hatched 

 about thirty hours. 



