AVES—CUCKOO. 5Al 
claws white. The plumage of the young birds is chiefly brown, mixed wita_ 
a ferruginous hue and black. Having disappeared all the 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, when we 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 ne difference in the great ill lookimg changeling from 
ner 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, 
aud one of the most destructive robbers of her future progeny. 
This intrusion often occasions some disorder, 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 two. 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 
46 
