86 FRESH LIGHT UPON THE CUCKOO 



other witnesses. Experience already gained enabled 

 him to calculate that the next egg would be laid forty- 

 eight hours later, and he was able by skilful artifice to 

 obtain cinematographic films of the bird in the act of 

 laying her third, fourth, twelfth, thirteenth and four- 

 teenth eggs, all in different nests of meadow-pipits and 

 titlarks, which build on the ground. 



Mr. Chance's series of films were exhibited at a 

 meeting of the Zoological Society's scientific committee 

 on 8th November 1921. The record showed how the 

 cuckoo took up a position on a tree, whence she could 

 see the nest, or the site thereof, wherein she intended 

 to lay, often sitting motionless for hours before sud- 

 denly sailing down to it. She then seated herself on 

 the nest, laid her own egg in less than ten seconds, 

 seized one of the other bird's eggs in her beak, backed 

 carefully out of the nest, and flew back to her tree, 

 where she proceeded to eat the stolen egg. Mr. Chance 

 was not the only witness of these burglarious acts. 

 The films showed how the owners and architects of the 

 nest were present at the violation of their home, 

 fluttering round in agitation as vain as it was vehement. 

 But the cruelest act in the tragedy is shown in later 

 films, taken close up to the nest. In these the young 

 cuckoo, when only two or three days old, is seen in the 

 act of ejecting the legitimate nestlings from their 

 nursery, as well as any egg that remains unhatched or 

 addled; surely one of the strangest examples of pre- 

 cocious instinct that can be imagined. Equally per- 

 plexing to our understanding is the behaviour of the 

 foster-parents. All their angry fluttering and scolding 



