210 THE RECTORY AND ITS BIRDS 



Winterbourne, in the lime-tree or the group of 

 sycamores in the field in " Parsonage Planta- 

 tion " beyond. I recollect finding, in quite early 

 life always an event and a surprise, even in the 

 annals of an old lover of birds, and this was the 

 first of the kind that I had met with the egg of 

 a cuckoo in a water- wagtail's nest, built in a large 

 heap of faggots which were stacked in the " barton," 

 at the back of the old tithe-barn. 



The questions raised by such a find, and the 

 abnormal, nay, unique instincts of the cuckoo with 

 regard to its eggs and young, are many, and appeal 

 almost as much to the child as to the scientific 

 observer. How comes the cuckoo, a bird of the 

 size of a kestrel hawk, to lay an egg about a fifth 

 of the size of a kestrel's and half the size of a 

 thrush's ? Does she feel any pang of motherly 

 anxiety, any twinge of conscience, when she 

 transfers all her responsibilities, as mother and 

 nurse, to a bird of quite a different kind, one with 

 whom she has had no sort of communication a 

 bird, too, a quarter of her own size : a hedge- 

 sparrow, a robin, a titlark, a reed-warbler, a white- 

 throat ? How does she get her egg into the nest, 

 which is often, as in the case of this particular 

 wagtail squeezed into a narrow recess, into which 



