74 WILD BIRDS 



is on the long list of birds in whose nests the cuckoo's 

 egg is placed, but I think it is not often the cuckoo's 

 host. When I saw the young cuckoo waiting to be 

 fed, I guessed a redbreast to be foster-parent. The 

 cuckoo squatted on the bare, lower limb of an oak 

 in a sandpit. It is a shady spot, with a path and 

 high bank near by, the very spot for a redbreast's 

 nest in April and May, and I heard a redbreast's 

 sharp " it-it " note just as I caught sight of the 

 cuckoo. 



The cuckoo has an agonising appeal for food to 

 its foster-parents and, should they be missing, 

 perhaps to other birds on the long cuckoo-serving 

 list. It cries to them, in a way irresistible, to come 

 instantly and appease this awful gnawing worm of 

 hunger that all day long is eating up its vitals. 



It cries sometimes with a whole nestful of nest- 

 lings' cries not one nestling calling for food, but 

 a brood of nestlings and is this not as it should 

 be, considering the cuckoo is a nestful of itself ? It 

 has hefted out all the others itself is the brood of 

 young. 



It has, besides this series of irresistible nestling 

 cries, a longer, a drawn-out and wearisome single 

 cry, at once peevish and imperious, which it repeats 

 over and over again. How strange not only does 

 the cuckoo's egg mimic the eggs of the bird in whose 

 nest they are placed, but the young cuckoo mimics 

 the cries of the young birds that ought to be in that 

 nest, and are lying dead beneath it ! Between the 

 note " cuckoo ! " and this impatient bird-baby 



