THE CUCKOO 137 



FAMILY CUCULID^E 

 THE CUCKOO 



CtJCULUS CAN6RUS 



Upper plumage bluish ash colour, darker on the wings, lighter on the neck and 

 chest ; under parts whitish with transverse dusky streaks ; quills barred 

 on the inner webs with oval white spots ; tail-feathers blackish, tipped 

 and spotted with white ; bill dusky, edged with yellow ; orbits and inside 

 of the mouth orange-yellow ; iris and feet yellow. Young — ash-brown, 

 barred with reddish brown ; tips of the feathers white ; a white spot 

 on the back of the head. Length thirteen inches and a half, breadth 

 twenty-three inches. Eggs varying in colour and markings. 



No bird in a state of nature utters a note approaching so closely 

 the sound of the human voice as the Cuckoo ; on this account, perhaps, 

 partially at least, it has at all times been regarded with especial 

 interest. Its habits have been much investigated, and they are 

 found to be unlike those of any other bird. The Cuckoo was a 

 puzzle to the earlier naturalists, and there are points in its biography 

 which are controverted still. From the days of Aristotle to those 

 of Pliny, it was supposed to undergo a metamorphosis twice a year, 

 appearing during the summer months as a Cuckoo, " a bird of the 

 hawk kind, though destitute of curved talons and hooked beak, and 

 having the bill of a Pigeon ; should it chance to appear simultane- 

 ously with a Hawk it was devoured, being the sole example of a bird 

 being killed by one of its own kind. In winter it actually changed 

 into a Merlin, but reappeared in spring in its own form, but with an 

 altered voice, laid a single egg, or rarely two, in the nest of some other 

 bird, generally a Pigeon, declining to rear its own young, because it 

 knew itself to be a common object of hostility among all birds, and 

 that its brood would be in consequence unsafe, unless it practised a 

 deception. The young Cuckoo being naturally greedy, monopolized 

 the food brought to the nest by its foster parents ; it thus grew 

 fat and sleek, and so excited its dam with admiration of her lovely 

 offspring, that she first neglected her own chicks, then suffered 

 them to be devoured before her eyes, and finally fell a victim herself 

 to his voracious appetite." x — A strange fiction, yet not more strange 

 than the truth, a glimmering of which appears throughout. We 

 know well enough now that the Cuckoo does not change into a 

 Merlin, but migrates in autumn to the southern regions of Africa ; 

 but this neither Aristotle nor Pliny could have known, for the com- 

 mon belief in their days was, that a continued progress southwards 

 would bring the traveller to a climate too fierce for the maintenance 

 of animal life. Now the Merlin visits the south of Europe, just at 

 the season when the Cuckoo disappears, and returns northwards to 



1 Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. x. cap. ix. 



