84 BIKDS 



seen them searching the ivy-covered walls for nests for 

 several minutes within thirty yards of a tennis court in 

 play, and on June 7, 1917, I heard a cuckoo between 

 7.55 and 8.15 p.m. (G.m.t.), call 220, then 107, and 

 again 14 times. The bird was close to me, and flew 

 several times to another tree and returned, calling many 



times whilst on the wing. 



WILLIAM NEWALL. 



P.S. I have a neighbour who shoots cuckoos because 

 " they are such immoral birds." He might as well shoot 

 sparrows. The only two English birds I know which 

 marry for life are the raven and the peregrine. 



II 



The late Archdeacon Basil Wilberforce's statement 

 about the cuckoo's eggs in Mr. Hart's museum at Christ- 

 church is quite correct. Mr. Hart has often shown me 

 the " clutches " mentioned, and the similarity, in colour 

 and marking, of the cuckoo's egg to its surrounding com- 

 panions is very marked. Mr. Hart's theory, as he ex- 

 plained it to me, is that this similarity occurred only when 

 the cuckoo could see the eggs among which she proposed 

 to deposit her own. In a domed nest, such as a wren's, 

 where the eggs were hidden, the likeness did not occur. 

 In Alfred Newton's "Dictionary of Birds," p. 121, he 

 discusses the matter at length, and quotes Dr. Baldanus 

 as a witness to the fact that the cuckoo frequently, if 

 not invariably, lays eggs resembling those in the nest she 

 has chosen as her own receptacle. Mr. Alfred Newton 

 states, in a note, that he saw Dr. Baldanus 's collection 

 of " clutches " in 1861 a collection which seems to have 

 resembled Mr. Hart's. He also states, however, that 

 " no likeness whatever is ordinarily apparent in the very 

 familiar case of the blue-green egg of the hedge-sparrow 

 and that of the cuckoo, which is so often seen beside 



