466 THE CUCKOO 



II 



It is when we turn to the nesting-habits of the cuckoo that we 

 open the strangest chapter in its life-history. As is well known, it 

 deposits its eggs in the nests of other species, and leaves to them the 

 duty of rearing its offspring. It thus frees itself entirely from the 

 labours of nest-building and incubation, and the still more arduous 

 work of feeding the young. It is left only with the responsibility of 

 finding nests in which to deposit each of its eggs, and possibly also of 

 taking certain precautions to ensure the upbringing of its young, of 

 which more later. 1 



The cuckoo has been seen flying over fields and along hedges 

 apparently searching for nests, but the recorded instances which leave 

 little or no doubt that it was actually thus engaged are few. In one 

 case a cuckoo was observed to enter two bushes in turn, harried the 

 while by a pair of sedge-warblers. When it had flown away, search 

 revealed in the second bush a nest containing two sedge-warbler's eggs. 

 Next day the same nest contained a cuckoo's egg in addition to two 

 sedge-warbler's, and outside it on the ground lay a third sedge- 

 warbler's egg broken. The inference is that the cuckoo found the 

 nest on one day and laid an egg in it on the next. That it was the 

 same bird is far more likely than not, for cases in which two hens 

 frequent the same nests are comparatively rare. 2 On another occa- 

 sion a meadow-pipit was seen to fly with nest material onto a meadow. 

 A cuckoo then appeared, hovered a while over the spot, alighted to 

 rise and hover again a little farther off, and alighted again after the 

 return and departure of the meadow-pipit. It then flew away. Search 

 revealed an almost finished, well-hidden nest of a pipit species. 3 



The foregoing instances provide evidence that the cuckoo 



1 A German ornithologist records that he saw a cuckoo incubating its eggs and feeding its 

 own young (Gartenlaube, xxxvi., 1888. Translated in the Ibis, 1889, and the Zoologist, 1889, 215). 

 But the authenticity of the account has been discredited (Journal fur Omithologie, 1889, 

 33-46. Translated in the Zoologist, 1889, 219). 



1 J. A. Link, quoting A. Walter, in the Verhandhmgen der Ornith. Gesellschaft in Bayern, 

 1903, 128. 3 J. A. Link, op. cit., p. 127. 



