484 THE CUCKOO 



cease to exist. I have myself, as related above in connection with 

 the young rook, 1 placed a callow willow-wren on the ground an inch 

 or two from the entrance of its nest, and though it wriggled there un- 

 comfortably and conspicuously, the parent bird passed again and 

 again over its head carrying food to the other nestlings without paying 

 it the least attention. Birds, like men, are very much creatures of 

 custom. 



IV 



The young cuckoo remains in the nest about twenty days. 2 When 

 hatched it has no down ; its naked, creased and wrinkled skin is a 

 pale flesh colour, 3 which later grows darker, becoming a slaty brown, 

 " in fact nearly black." 4 On the seventh day the bird is nearly covered 

 with sprouting quills, and its eyes are opening. 5 On the fourteenth 

 it is well covered with bristly, growing feathers. Now and later, it 

 appears, when disturbed, a truly startling object ; it swells up in the 

 nest, snapping and uttering quick, vicious little notes, its plumage all 

 erect, its throat puffed out, and its angry eyes deep-set in bristling 

 feathers, giving it an air of resolute ferocity that is almost terrifying. 

 One that I placed on the ground to photograph behaved in exactly 

 the same way, rising on its feet and making little angry springs and 

 snaps at my finger. I noted that the inside of its capacious mouth 

 was a bright red, in this resembling its parents. At what date the 

 mouth assumes the red is not recorded ; on the first day after hatch- 

 ing it is "pale yellow without any spots on the palate." 6 



The note of the young cuckoo was described by Jenner as a 

 " chuckling noise like a young hawk's." It has been syllabled as chiz, 

 chiz, chiz, 7 and tz, tz, tz, tz ! 8 but whether its call-note for food and its 

 note of anger are the same is not clear. The former has been 



1 Vol. i. p. 40. 



1 Memoires Soc. Zool. France, 1895, 151 (X. Raspail) ; Wustnei and Clodius, Vogel Mecklen- 

 burg* ; Zoologist, 1905, 104 ( J. H. Gurney) ; British Birds, i. 363 (P. H. Bahr). 



3 Zoologist, 1889, 33-40 (A. Walter). 4 Zoologist, 1905, 104 (J. H. Gurney). 



s J. H. Gurney, loc. cit. J. H. Gurney, op. cit. 



7 Coward, Fauna of Cheshire, i. 208. Field, 1898, 358. 



