182 BRITISH BIRDS. [vol xv. 



6th. Her last fourteen eggs were laid and deposited on the 

 days of the laying of the fourth egg of her dupes and no egg; 

 was deposited before i p.m. nor after 2.30 p.m. This I can 

 vouch for, and she carried out the same practices in 1920, 

 when out of a total of sixteen eggs laid she, on no less than 

 ten occasions to my knowledge, deposited her egg on the 

 fourth day of her host, removing two fosterer's eggs at each 

 time of depositing her own. It will be noticed that she 

 deviated somewhat in her regularity of laying (every other day) 

 in not laying on June 4th. This egg arrived on the 5th, 

 but I attribute this to great cold on the third night and also 

 on the fourth day. It is astounding that at each time of 

 deposit she removed half the contents of the nest, on five 

 occasions removing one egg from two and on fourteen occasions 

 removing two from four. Her last two eggs were very 

 small as compared with the others, which shows that her 

 laying capacity had been severely tested. I attribute her 

 great regularity to a certain extent to her fortune in selecting 

 a locality where she was so immune from molestation. From 

 May 26th, when she laid her fifth egg, she was never in want 

 of a suitable nest, in fact, when I got her tenth egg there 

 were fourteen nests in a suitable condition for the receipt 

 of her egg. By suitable I mean nests containing either one, 

 two, three or four fresh eggs. 



This Cuckoo from past experience has the position on these 

 marshes well in hand. The tall hawthorns which grow on 

 the ditch banks are used by her as observation posts as they 

 provide her with a good command of the reeds below. In all 

 her depositions she is accompanied by one male and sometimes 

 two. It is the males who engage the attention of the fosterers 

 when she is on her business of deposition. Immediately 

 after she has safely deposited her egg, she flies away bubbling 

 with her one or two male consorts for two to three hours, 

 possibly to feed, returning later to find the nest for her next 

 egg, due forty-eight hours later. In this particular business 

 she acts quite alone and to my mind this is the most interesting 

 of all her movements. In finding nests for her subsequent 

 eggs she will sit motionless for an hour on end watching a 

 stretch of reeds from one of the tall hawthorns. Presently 

 she will go down, remaining in the reed-bed for several 

 minutes and very often leaving thirty or forty yards from 

 where she first entered. This is the time to watch her as 

 it often saves much time and hard work " doing " the reeds, 

 which is much harder work than one would imagine. Upon 

 leaving the reed-bed after such excursions she will always 



