AVES-CUCKOO. 541 



claws white. Tfie plumage of the young birds is chiefly brown, mixed with 

 a ferruginous hue and black. Having disappeared all tlie autumn and win- 

 ter, it discovers itself in our country, early in the spring, by its well known 

 call. Its note is heard earlier or later, as the season seems to be more or 

 less forward, and the weather more or less inviting. From the cheerful 

 voice of this bird, the farmer may be instructed in the real advancement of 

 the year. His note is pleasant, though uniform ; and, from an association 

 of ideas, seldom occurs to the memory without reminding us of the sweets 

 of summer. There is a popular superstition, that he who hears the cuckoo 

 before he has heard the nightingale, will be unsuccessful in love. To this 

 idea Milton elegantly alludes in his Sonnet to the Nightingale. 



It was once doubted, whether these birds were carnivorous; but Reaumur 

 was at the pains of breeding up several, and found that they would feed 



upon bread or corn ; but flesh and insects were their favorite nourishment. 

 Their gluttony is not to be wondered at, Avhen vre consider the capacity 

 of their stomach, which is enormous, and reaches from the breast-bone to 

 the vent. 



The female cuckoo, in general, makes no nest of her own. She has, 

 however, been known to rear her own young. But, usually, she repairs for 

 that purpose to the nest of some other bird, generally the water-wagtail or 

 hedge-sparrow, and having devoured the eggs of the owner, lays her egg in 

 the place. She usually lays but one, which is speckled, and of the size of a 

 blackbird's. This the fond, foolish bird hatches with great assiduity, and 

 when excluded, finds no difference in the great ill looking changeling from 

 her own. To supply this voracious creature, the credulous nurse toils with 

 unusual labor, no way sensible that she is feeding up an enemy to her race, 

 and one of the most destructive robbers of her future progeny. 



This intrusion often occasions some disoi-der, for the hedge-sparrow, at 

 intervals, while she is sitting, not only throws out some of her own eggs, 

 but sometimes injures them in such a manner that they become addled ; so 

 that it frequently happens that not more than tAvo or three of the parent 

 bird's eggs are hatched ; but it has never been observed that the egg of the 

 cuckoo has either been thrown out or injured. The newly hatched cuckoo 

 itself, also contrives to raise up the young, and throw them out of the nest, 

 and nature seems to have provided for its doing so, by giving to it a broad 



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