COMMON CUCKOO. 201 



Highland districts, that Cuckoos, on their first arrival especially, 

 keep very much together and give free utterance to their welcome 

 cry, as if joyous at the sight of their old haunts, now clothed with 

 fresh verdure. 



Writing from the inner islands, Mr Graham sends the following 

 remarks : " At the usual time of year the well-known sound of 

 the Cuckoo's cry is heard in all the moorlands, peat mosses, and 

 broken land, half scrub and half rock, the birds usually selecting 

 some slight eminence or knoll, whence they keep calling and re- 

 echoing each other's cry, so that such favourite spots often get 

 named after them as Mona-Chuich, or Cuckoo's moor, Dun-Chuich, 

 Beris-Chuicli, or Beann-na-cuaig, (Pennycuick), and, I suppose, Cock- 

 pen, etc. Cuach (the unaspirated nominative) is derived from the 

 bird's cry." 



Throughout western Scotland the Cuckoo deposits its egg 

 chiefly in the nest of the titlark or meadow pipit, especially on the 

 borders of glens and sides of mountains where that species is 

 perhaps the commonest bird to be met with. I have found young 

 cuckoos barely fledged in the islands of Loch Lomond: the last 

 one I saw was on Inchmoin, and was attended by a pipit, which 

 diligently ministered to its wants as it sat weighing down a mass 

 of purple heather bloom, at the roots of which lay the flattened 

 nest of the pipit. On putting up the fat little fellow he boldly 

 turned his head towards the mainland, but had not proceeded fifty 

 yards when he fell plump into the loch. His little foster-mother 

 followed him with an uneasy zig-zag sort of flight, giving vent, for 

 a few minutes, to its grief and surprise at the catastrophe, but 

 finding it could do nothing for him it wisely returned to its island 

 home. 



The Rev. Wm. Patrick, in his account of the parish of Hamilton, 

 states that, about two years previous to the date of his report, 

 "many of the inhabitants of Hamilton were attracted to Mr 

 Fisher's at Claudsburn, in the neighbourhood of the town, to see a 

 robin redbreast feeding a young cuckoo which it had hatched. The 

 little bird had been a pet during the winter, but, leaving its 

 master, and searching out for a mate in the spring, met with this 

 misfortune. The toil of feeding so large a bird as the Cuckoo, 

 which by this time was flying about the orchard, soon compelled 

 robin to apply once more to his former benefactor for assistance; 

 and it was curious to see the fond dupe come and peck worms and 



