212 THE RECTORY AND ITS BIRDS 



the young interloper that strange instinct which 

 compels it, only a few days after it has been 

 hatched, when it is still sightless and unable to 

 raise its body, to insert itself with enormous labour 

 under the bodies of its foster-brothers or sisters and 

 eject them, one after the other, from the nest, in 

 order to make room for itself? There are few 

 more grotesquely interesting sights in Nature than 

 that of the young monster, when it has outgrown 

 the nest, and is already bigger than its foster- 

 parents, squatting, as my young cuckoo did, in the 

 middle of the barton, opening its mouth wide enough 

 almost to swallow the Lilliputian parents themselves, 

 as they ply it with minute insect food, or a little 

 later on, when it has learned to perch, sitting on 

 the iron railings of the garden, and receiving the 

 same assiduous attentions. That the cuckoo has 

 some local attachments and is not a mere " wander- 

 ing voice," and that the wagtail does not learn, by 

 bitter experience, to shirk the duties imposed upon 

 it, is proved, I think, by what happened at Stock 

 House, a few miles from Bingham's Melcombe. 

 Three years running, a pair of wagtails, who haunted 

 the lawn there throughout the year, built their nest 

 in exactly the same spot, hidden by a creeper, on a 

 ledge above the front door of the house ; and three 



