CUCKOO. 81 



mothers for its disregarded eggs and young, and may deposit 

 them only under their care, this would be adding wonder to 

 wonder, and instancing, in a fresh manner, that the methods 

 of Providence are not subjected to any mode or rule, but 

 astonish us in new lights, and in various and changeable 

 appearances. * 



* There exists much opposition of opinion among naturalists on tliis 

 curious question. We give the following as the latest observations made 

 by an attentive observer of nature, Mr Hoy, of Stoke Nayland, Suffolk, 

 in 1831 : "A pair of wagtails (motacilla alba) fixed their nest, early 

 in April, among the ivy which covers one side of my house, and reared 

 and took off their young. A few days after the young birds had left the 

 nest, I observed the old birds apparently collecting materials for building, 

 and was much amused at seeing the young running after the parent 

 birds, with imploring looks and gestures, demanding food ; but the old 

 birds, with roots or pieces of grass in their bills, seemed quite heedless of 

 them, and intent on their new habitation. Their motions were narrowly 

 watched by a female cuckoo, which I saw constantly near the place ; but the 

 wagtails had placed their second nest within a yard of the door, and so 

 well concealed among some luxuriant ivy, that the cuckoo, being often 

 frightened away, was not able to discover the nest. The intruder being 

 thus thwarted in its design, the birds hatched their second brood, which 

 was accidentally destroyed a few days after. In about ten days they 

 actually commenced a third nest, within a few feet of the situation of the 

 second, in safety. I have repeatedly taken the cuckoo's eggs from the 

 wagtail's nest ; in this locality, it has a decided preference to it. I do 

 not recollect finding it in any other, excepting in two instances, once 

 in the hedge-warbler's, and another time in the redstart's nest. In this 

 vicinity, whether the wagtail selects the hole of a pollard tree, a cleft in 

 the wall, or a projecting ledge under a bridge, it does not often escape the 

 prying eye of the cuckoo, as, in all these situations, I have frequently 

 found either egg or young. The cuckoo appears to possess the power of 

 retaining its egg for some time after it is ready for extrusion. On one 

 occasion, I had observed a cuckoo during several days anxiously watching 

 a pair of wagtails building ; I saw the cuckoo fly from the nest two or 

 three times before it was half completed ; and at last the labour of the 

 wagtails not going on, I imagine, so rapidly as might be wished, the cuckoo 

 deposited its egg before the lining of the nest was finished. The egg, 

 contrary to my expectation, was not thrown out ; and on the following 

 day the wagtail commenced laying, and, as usual, the intruder was hatched 

 at the same time as the rest, and soon had the whole nest to itself. I 

 once observed a cuckoo enter a wagtail's nest, which I had noticed before 

 to contain one egg ; in a few minutes the cuckoo crept from the hole, and 

 was flying away with something in its beak, which proved to be the egg 

 of the wagtail, which it dropped on my firing a gun at it. On examining 

 the nest, the cuckoo had only made an exchange, leaving its own egg for 

 the one taken. In May, 1829, 1 found two cuckoo's eggs in the same nest, 

 and depended on witnessing a desperate struggle between the parties, but 

 my hopes were frustrated by some person destroying it." 



This subject is still involved in great obscurity, notwithstanding- the 

 above striking facts. ED. 



F 



