A CUCKOO IN A ROBIN'S NEST 25 



returned with food, and warmed it again, and never 

 once did she pay the least attention to the outcast 

 lying there so close to her. There, on its green leaf, 

 it remained, growing colder by degrees, hour by hour, 

 motionless, except when it lifted its head as if to 

 receive food, then dropped it again, and when, at 

 intervals, it twitched its body as if trying to move. 

 During the evening even these slight motions ceased, 

 though that feeblest flame of life was not yet extin- 

 guished ; but in the morning it was dead and cold and 

 stiff ; and just above it, her bright eyes on it, the mother 

 robin sat on the nest as before, warming her cuckoo. 



How amazing and almost incredible it seems that 

 a being such as a robin, intelligent above most birds 

 as we are apt to think, should prove in this instance 

 to be a mere automaton! The case would, I think, 

 have been different if the ejected one had made a 

 sound, since there is nothing which more excites the 

 parent bird, or which is more instantly responded to, 

 than the cry of hunger or distress of the young. But 

 at this early stage the nestling is voiceless another 

 point in favour of the parasite. The sight of its young, 

 we see, slowly and dumbly dying, touches no chord 

 in the parent: there is, hi fact, no recognition; once 

 out of the nest it is no more than a coloured leaf, or a 

 bird-shaped pebble, or fragment of clay. 



It happened that my young fellow-watchers, seeing 

 that the ejected robin if left there would inevitably 

 perish, proposed to take it in to feed and rear it 



