496 



The Living Animals of the World 



confirmed by most trustworthy observers, we must now admit the charge proved. One of 

 the best known of these accounts is that of Mrs. Hugh Blackburn. She has given us a vivid 

 picture of this most extraordinary of domestic tragedies. The victims in this instance were 

 meadow-pipits. Finding a pipit's nest with a cuckoo's egg therein, she kept it carefully 

 under observation. At one visit she found the pipits hatched, but not the cuckoo. Forty- 

 eight hours later the cuckoo had not only arrived, but ousted his foster-brothers and -sisters, 

 who were found lying outside the nest, but yet alive. They were replaced beside the cuckoo, 

 which at once reopened hostilities for the purpose of maintaining its absolute possession of 

 the nursery. This it did by burrowing under one of them, which, balanced upon its back, 

 it proceeded to eject by climbing up the nest tail-fore most, till, reaching the brim, it could 

 relieve itself of its burden by heaving it over the edge and down the bank. Pausing a 

 moment, it then felt backwards with its wings to make sure the pipit was really gone, and, 

 having satisfied itself on this point, subsided to the bottom of the nest. Next day, when 

 the nest was visited, the remaining pipit was found outside the nest cold and dead. " But 

 what struck me most," she writes, "was this: the cuckoo was perfectly naked, without a 

 vestige of a feather or even a hint of feathers, its eyes were not yet opened, and its neck 

 seemed too weak to support the weight of its head. The pipits had well-developed quills on 

 the wings and back, and had bright eyes partially opened, yet they seemed quite helpless 

 under the manipulations of the cuckoo, which looked a much less developed creature." 



The GREAT SPOTTED CUCKOO of South Europe and North Africa is a species which, though 

 parasitic, does not seem to have sunk to such a depth as the common cuckoo. Its eggs 



very closely resemble those of certain 

 magpies and crows within its breeding- 

 area, and it is in the nests of these that 

 they are deposited. We may assume 

 that mimicry has been resorted to, and 

 become perfected by the same means as 

 have accomplished this end in the case 

 <?f the common cuckoo. We notice here, 

 however, two points of difference there- 

 from. In the first place, from two to 

 four eggs are left in each nest instead 

 of one ; and, secondly, the young cuckoos 

 seem to live in perfect amity with their 

 foster-brothers and -sisters there is no 

 ejection of the rightful heirs. 



Having pledged themselves to a 

 course of deception and treachery, there 

 is no telling the lengths to which such 

 conduct may lead. We have already 

 seen that the bird has succeeded in lay- 

 ing what we may call forged eggs, but 

 we come now to an instance where the 

 young has also to be disguised. This 

 is furnished by a species of cuckoo 

 known as the KOEL, inhabiting Palawan, 

 an island in the Philippines. This bird 

 shifts its parental duties upon the 

 shoulders of a species of myna inhabit- 



bu j. r. xtwman] (Berkhamitcd. ing the same island. Now, the , mynas 



'CUCKOO ONE DAY OLD IN HEDGE-SPARROW'S NEST. are black, and their, young, as is often 



Tte young bird hns its mouth open, ready for all the food the foster-parents can j^e case where both S6X6S are Coloured 

 collect. 



