YOUNG BIRDS AND BIRDS' EGGS 



229 



they can use their "hands" to assist them in climbing 

 up upon or among them. 



In the avifauna of this country as well as in that of 

 the Old World, there are a few birds that lay their eggs 

 in the nests of other birds, the latter being of entirely 

 different species or even families. The nestlings of such 

 species are reared by their foster parents, and never at 

 any time see their own. The Cuckoos of the Old World 

 have this habit; while with us it is the Cow-bird which 

 is the guilty one. In either case only a single egg is 

 deposited, and the young cuckoo, as it grows, manages to 

 push the rightful occupants off the nest, being fed by 

 their parents until it is ready to shift for itself. Young 

 cow-birds do not behave in this way; in any particular 

 case they are 

 fed by the fos- 

 ter parents as 

 one of their 

 own brood, and 

 cared for until 

 they all leave 

 the nest at the 

 same time. 

 There is an ex- 

 tensive litera- 

 ture on this ex- 

 t r ao r d i nary 

 habit, the sub- 

 ject having 

 been written to 

 the limit. 



"The whole 

 process has 

 often been 

 watched," says 

 Alfred Newton 

 in his work en- 

 titled "A Dic- 

 tionary of 

 Birds;" "but 

 the reflective 

 naturalist will 

 pause to ask 

 how such a 

 state of things came about, and there is not much to 

 satisfy his enquiry. Certain it is that some birds, whether 

 by mistake or stupidity, do not infrequently lay their 

 eggs in the nests of others. It is within the knowledge of 

 many that Pheasants' eggs and Partridges' eggs are often 

 laid in the same nest, and it is within the knowledge of 

 the writer that Gulls' eggs have been found in the nests 

 of Eider-Ducks, and vice versa; that a Redstart or a 

 Pied Flycatcher, or the latter and a Titmouse, will lay 

 their eggs in the same convenient hole the forest being 

 rather deficient in such accommodation ; that an Owl 

 and a Golden-Eye will resort to the same next-box, set 

 up by a scheming woodsman for his own advantage, and 

 that the Starling, which constantly dispossesses the 

 Green Woodpecker, sometimes discovers that the rightful 



MEADOW LARK'S NEST 



Figure 6 The meadow lark is a well-known bird in the country- east of the Mississippi, and a general 

 favorite; it builds a loosely-fashioned nest on the ground in a tuft of grass. This typical nest contains 

 two young larks. 



heir of the domicile has to be brought up by the intrud- 

 ing tenant." In the case of our cow-bird, the pres- 

 ent writer has watched the performance upon several 

 occasions. 



Not a few birds in different parts of the world practi- 

 cally rear their nestlings in the dark. Well-known ex- 

 amples of this are seen in sand-martins and king-fishers 

 birds that dig, or scrape out, long burrows in banks, and 

 lay their eggs at the farther end of them. Prairie-owls 

 select the deserted burrows of the "prairie-dogs ;" chim- 

 ney swifts construct their nests far down in dark and 

 sooty chimneys, and woodpeckers constitute other familiar 

 examples of this, as do a vast host of other species of 

 birds all over the world. Upon the other hand, nestlings 



of some birds 

 are hatched out 

 in the most ex- 

 posed places, 

 entirely unpro- 

 tected from the 

 sun, the rain, 

 and the gales. 

 Many years 

 ago the present 

 writer visited 

 one of the 

 Florida Cays, 

 upon which 

 thousands of 

 gulls, terns, 

 noddies, cormo- 

 rants, and oth- 

 er species, 

 reared their 

 young ; their 

 eggs were de- 

 posited all over 

 the naked 

 rocks, to the 

 extent of hun- 

 dreds upon 

 hundreds. In 

 some places, 

 clutches were 

 but a foot or so apart, while nowhere did they seem to 

 be more than a yard or two. As the birds arose in the 

 air, the afternoon sun was actually darkened by their 

 numbers. Soon the sailors with our party collected sev- 

 eral bushels of the eggs for the crew of the gun-boat to 

 which they and the writer were attached at the time yet 

 the supply would hardly be missed over the area where 

 they were gathered. The distinguished British naturalist, 

 Professor Moseley, states that the incubating albatrxfes 

 holds her single egg in a sort of pouch on the lower part of 

 her abdomen ; and Mr. Dudley Le Souef, Director of the 

 Zoological Gardens of Melbourne, Australia, has made 

 a wonderfully fine photograph of a female albatross in- 

 cubating her egg, in which one-half of the egg is seen 

 within the aforesaid pouch. 



