THE CUCKOO 4s:, 



compared to the " twisting of u glass 8top|>er in a bottle." According 

 to Mr. Coward, the young cuckoo, at least when it has quitted the neat, 

 is not affected by the alarm-notes of the foster-parents. 1 



Both before and after quitting the nest the little cuckoo is fed 

 assiduously by its foster-parents, for which it is not always sufficient I \ 

 grateful. One was seen, after receiving its food, invariably to make ft 

 vicious snap at the giver, a pipit, which the latter managed to avoid 

 on each occasion by prompt retreat 3 When out of the nest, one of 

 the foster-parents may not uncommonly be seen perched on the 

 cuckoo's back, a convenient perch from which it is able to drop its 

 contribution into the upturned, wide-open, red blaxing gape of its 

 gigantic charge. 4 How long the young cuckoo continues to be fed 

 after quitting the nest has not been exactly recorded. 



The food given to the young cuckoo varies, of course, with the 



v|.'<-ics of tlic t'oMrr |MI lit. <>lir tetl l'\ \Mt-UliK ivcri \ ctl Ilirs. 



beetles, small snails, grasshoppers, caterpillars, jmrt of a horse bean, 

 and vegetable substance resembling bits of tou^h grass, which was 

 found inside it rolled into a ball ; also seeds of a vegetable resembling 

 those of the goose-grass. Another was nourished by a tit-lark, chiefly 

 ^ith grasshoppers; a third by a hedge-sparrow, almost entirely with 

 \ . _:etable food, wheat, vetches, etc., an exceptional diet, as, according 

 t .lenner, from whom these details are taken, hedge-sparrows usually 

 feed young cuckoos on animal food. Snails and large worms formed 

 the diet provided by a tit-lark observed by Weir. 



It would be interesting to know whether the diet of the young 

 cuckoo influences its adult gastronomic tastes, thus causing con- 

 siderable variations in the food of individual birds. The only varia- 

 tion of which we have at present any certainty is that caused by the 

 \.ir\iiiL 1 nature of the cuckoo's habitat Baron Droste-Hulshoff 

 relates, for instance, that the cuckoos which bred among the sand- 

 hill- <>t the island of Borkutn off the mouth of the Ems, had to deny 



1 British Bird*, i. 863 (P. U. BahrX ' Loc. cit. ' Coward, Joe. cit. 



4 For photograph* of thin nee British Birds, i. 806 (P. II. Bahr) ; and K. Krarton*' A'a/uiVc 

 Carat Singer*, p. H. 



