no SURREY SCENES 



Even other young birds, if placed in the same cage 

 with a young cuckoo, soon begin to feed it. Yet after 

 all the spoiling which it receives, the cuckoo is a 

 thoroughly ill-conditioned, surly, and spiteful bird. A 

 young one, which was daily fed by a thrush no older 

 than itself which was confined in the same cage, pecked 

 the poor bird's eye out because it ventured to eat a 

 worm itself. Buffon speaks of a tame cuckoo which 

 would follow its owner, flying from tree to tree, some- 

 times leaving him for a time to visit the cherry 

 orchards. We much doubt whether cuckoos eat 

 cherries. All the tame cuckoos we have known have 

 been uninteresting and unfriendly birds. At the Zoo, 

 where English wild birds and migrants are tamed in 

 the large aviaries, and nightingales, wagtails, warblers, 

 and even a woodcock live together on the best of 

 terms, the cuckoos are wild and as much disliked by 

 the other birds in captivity as they are when free. 

 But the sounds of summer would be the poorer for the 

 loss of the cuckoo's note. It is beyond all others the 

 sylvan bird, certain to be found among the lofty oak 

 groves and the glades of noble parks ; and its cry, 

 heard even before the dawn, brings crowding memories 

 of the lakes and woods of Selborne and Wolmer Forest, 

 of Windsor Park, of Brockenhurst, and the wide 

 woodlands of the South. 



