94 



THE BIRDS OE THE WOODS 



purpose she passes ou seemingly indifferent, only to return so soon as the builders 

 are absent. Generally she avoids their attacks, though sometimes furious 

 fights take place. In a nest where she is able to settle down without hurting the 

 other eggs, she lays her egg at once ; but when the selected nest is not accessible, 

 being perhaps in the hollow of a tree, or if it is courageously defended by its 

 owners, she deposits her egg on the ground, subsequently picking it up in her 

 mouth and dropping it into the nest, so soon as this can be done without attracting 

 attention. Sometimes a mistake is made, as in the case of the entrance of the 

 hole being too small, when the young cuckoo is unable to leave the nest, where it 

 must perish miserably. 



A short time after the young cuckoo is hatched, it is generally found by itself 

 in the nest, owing to its habit of pushing the other fledglings out so soon as it is 

 strong enough to do so. At any rate it is always hatched a day or so earlier than 



THE CCCKOO. 



its step brothers and sisters. Some naturalists think that the parasitical habit is 

 connected with the food of the cuckoo : for the cuckoo lives at certain seasons on 

 the hairy larvae of the tiger-moth, whose hairs pierce the protecting skin of its 

 stomach, sometimes in such large numbers that this skin is as hair)- as fur, and 

 this food is said to be injurious to the young birds. At other times the cuckoo 

 eats other caterpillars as well, for instance those of the white cabbage-butterily, 

 which, strange to say, are avoided by most other birds. 



At one time there was supposed to be another cause for the parasitical nesting, 

 this being the long interval between the laying of each egg. It used to be said that 

 if she hatched them herself she would have young birds and eggs together in her 

 nest, but this was a mistake, as these birds lay one egg every day, and not every 

 sixth or seventh day, as was then considered to be the case. Just as mistaken is the 

 theory of making the structure of the sexual organs responsible for the parasitical 

 habit. On the contrary, it is probably the great number of their eggs that is 

 connected with this habit, but only as a consequence of, not as a reason for, the 



