230 The Naturalist in Siluria. 



A BIRD'S INSTINCT, OR SAGACITY, WHICH 

 NEEDS EXPLAINING. 



In The Live Stock Journal I once gave an account 

 of a tree pipit (Anthus arboreus) that had discovered 

 its young in a cage where they had been put, after 

 being carried off from the nest, and so transported that 

 the parent birds could hot possibly have seen whither 

 they were taken. I can now record a still more singular 

 case of a similar kind, the despoiled nest being that of 



CUCKOO AND WAGTAIL. 



a wagtail, and the abstracted bird a young half-grown 

 cuckoo. The latter, taken away from the nest, where it 

 was a usurper, was carried inside a farmhouse, into one 

 of the rooms, there deposited in an empty blackbird's 

 cage, and was for a time left to itself. He who so placed 

 it, returning in an hour or two afterwards, found it no 



