3648 The Zoologist — Adgust, 1873. 



as there is a colony of them above in the belfry. They were discovered by 

 the noise they made -while being fed. — John Sclater. 



Starling's Mode of Feeding. — I witnessed a few days ago a habit of the 

 starling previously unknown to me. I was watching from a window a pair 

 searching the newly-mown lawn, when I observed them pricking the ground, 

 or rather grass-roots, with their mouths wide open, the mandibles being 

 thus thrust in wide apart ; this was continued until an insect was found, 

 which was immediately swallowed. — Id. 



Note on the Cuckoo and Pied Wagtail. — The following relation has 

 been given to me by my friend Mr. Edward Fountaine, of Easton, Norfolk, 

 and is T think worthy of a jDlace in the pages of the ' Zoologist.' Mr. Foun- 

 taine has a small garden adjoining his residence, which is bounded on the 

 side next the public road by an old ivy-clad wall. For eight or nine years, 

 ending in 1871, a pair of pied wagtails nested twice every year in this ivy, 

 with the exception of one year, when they built their nest under the tiles of 

 an adjacent wood-shed. In each of these years the wagtails safely reared 

 their first brood, after which they annually constructed a second nest, in 

 which, ill every one of the above years, a cuckoo laid its egg, which was duly 

 hatched and tlie young cuckoo successfully reared by the wagtails, except 

 on one occasion when their foster-child was killed by falling out of the nest. 

 Although the note of the cuckoo was frequently heard in the immediate 

 vicinity, after the young cuckoo was hatched, the parent cuckoo was never 

 observed in any way to take any notice of its offspring. In 1872 the wag- 

 tails did not build their first nest as usual in the ivy, but in a large block 

 of wood in which flowers were grown in another part of the garden : this 

 nest was accidentally destroyed, probably by a rat, after which the wagtails 

 forsook the garden, and did not appear there again that season. The 

 cuckoo was seen several times in the garden early in the morning during 

 the month of June, 1872 ; but whether the wagtails made a second nest 

 elsewhere in that year, and if so whether the cuckoo succeeded in finding it, 

 Mr. Fountaine is unable to say. During the spring of the present year 

 the wagtails again nested in the ivy, and there successfully reared their first 

 brood, since which they have constructed a second nest in another part of 

 the garden, which now (.^une 12th) contains four of their own eggs, but 

 none of the cuckoo's. — J. II. Ourney ; June, 1873. 



The Cuckoo. — How can it be ascertained with certainty whether the same 

 hen cuckoo always lays eggs of the same colour, or whether (admitting this 

 to be the case) she invariably lays in the nest of the same species — that is, 

 in the nest of that species whose eggs most nearly approximate in colour to 

 her own? And yet we must be satisfied on these points if we are to accept 

 the ingenious theory of Dr. Baldamus. If we understand the learned 

 German rightly, he states that, with a view to insure the preservation of 

 species which would otherwise be e.xposed to danger, Nature has endowed 



