THE CUCKOOS AND THE OUTWITTED COW-BIRD 37 



helpless under the manipulations of the cuckoo, 

 which looked a much less developed creature. 

 The cuckoo's legs, however, seemed very muscu- 

 lar; and it appeared to feel about with its wings, 

 which were absolutely featherless, as with hands, 

 the spurious wing (unusually large in proportion) 

 looking like a spread-out thumb." 



Considering how rarely we see the cow-bird in 

 our walks, her merciless ubiquity is astonishing. 

 It occasionally happens that almost every nest 

 I meet in a day's walk will show the ominous 

 speckled egg. In a single stroll in the country I 

 have removed eight of these foreboding tokens of 

 misery. Only last summer I discovered the nest 

 of a wood-sparrow in a hazel-bush, my attention 

 being attracted thither by the parent bird bearing 

 food in her beak. I found the nest occupied, ap- 

 propriated, monopolized, by a cow-bird fledgling — 

 a great, fat, clamoring lubber, completely filling 

 the cavity of the nest, the one diminutive, puny 

 remnant of the sparrow's offspring being jammed 

 against the side of the nest, and a skeleton of a 

 previous victim hanging among the branches be- 

 low, with doubtless others lost in the grass some- 

 where in the near neighborhood, where they had 

 been removed by the bereaved mother. The 

 ravenous young parasite, though not half grown, 



