CUCKOO. 107 



snails, grasshoppers, flies, and beetles, but in either case, whether 

 it be their natural, or rather their unnatural parents, or their 

 foster-parents that purvey for them, they are insatiable in 

 their cravings for food, and their continual cry, like Oliver 

 Twist, is for 'more! more!' Equally earnest is the foster- 

 parent in providing for their wants: one has been seen to 

 alight on the back of the intruder who filled her nest, the 

 better to supply it with food. 



But, though the Cuckoo entrusts her offspring in the unac- 

 countable and extraordinary way that she does to the fostering 

 care of an alien species, she does not altogether lose sight of 

 it, but keeps in the neighbourhood, and, it may be, even takes 

 it in some degree under her own protection after it has left 

 the nest. This observation has just been corroborated to me 

 by Gr. Grantham, Esq., and certain it is that in some places, 

 probably the same where her egg has been deposited, you will 

 hear the note of one or the other of the parents from day 

 to day for a considerable time. Nay, more than this, it has 

 been Indisputably established that the Cuckoo, doubtless the 

 female will, on occasion it may be, but certainly occasionally, 

 feed her own young. This interesting fact was witnessed in 

 the past year, 1850, by J. Mc'Intosli, Esq., of Charminster, 

 Dorsetshire, who was so obliging as to communicate it to 

 me in the first instance, and has since published a notice of 

 it in the pages of 'The Naturalist' Magazine. In the instance 

 he mentions, a Cuckoo laid her egg in the nest of a Dunnock, 

 in which the latter subsequently laid four eggs. The young 

 birds hatched from these were dislodged soon after their birth, 

 and simultaneously their parent disappeared also a victim 

 perhaps to grief, the gun of some fowler, or the talons of a 

 cat. The want then of her care may have been the cause of 

 the Cuckoo from thenceforth looking after her own young 

 one, over whom she must in such case have been keeping 

 some watch; and the like may have been the cause in some 

 of the other similar instances, which have indubitably occurred. 

 Mr. Mc'Intosh distinctly saw the parent Cuckoo in question 

 feed its young one, from day to day, with the greatest care 

 and attention, with caterpillars; for which it flew over the 

 wall into the adjoining garden, in which they were abundantly 

 to be procured. The indigestible part of the food of the 

 Cuckoo is cast up, as in the case of the Hawks, in pellets. 



Mr. William Kidd, of Hammersmith, relates the following: 

 'A few years since, the sight of a Redbreast feeding a 



