128 Romance of the Cuckoo. 



parents, and I have wondered, when the Cuckoo has been reared 

 by other species than the Titlark, whether it has the same 

 call-note, I have kept young Cuckoos which have been reared 

 by Titlarks, and sometimes have taken them about with me 

 in my rambles. It is often said that small birds in the presence 

 of the Cockoo mistake it for a Hawk ; but I cannot share this 

 belief. I placed a young Cuckoo on a wall recently in the 

 neighbourhood of a Titlark's nest — five Pipits, a Lark and 

 Wagtail soon assembled. Certainly the Pipits belonging to 

 the nest hustled the Cuckoo off the wall once or twice but the 

 other Pipits evinced more curiosity than anger, and kept 

 flying from one side to another and appeared to be fascinated 

 for over a half an hour. At last two Pipits kept flying down 

 into the pasture and back to the Cuckoo ; this they repeated 

 a good many times. I took the Pipits to be seeking for food, 

 but did not see them offer any to the Cuckoo. I took my 

 young Cuckoo again to the moor and sat down near a Titlark's 

 nest containing a young Cuckoo, and placed my Cuckoo a 

 few yards away. Soon a good many Titlarks assembled, two 

 of which played about the Cuckoo as long as I remained sat 

 down without manifesting the slightest fear : to me they 

 appeared as if they wanted to feed the young Cuckoo. After 

 this incident, on returning home, I sat down on the edge of a 

 wood, soon after which a Sparrow Hawk flew over my head, 

 which was a signal for all the birds in the neighbourhood to 

 scamper off into various hiding places, and I could not help 

 contrasting the behaviour of the bird at the approach of the 

 Hawk, with the Pipits in the presence of the Cuckoo. 



The young Cuckoo has an enormous appetite, so much so, 

 that when I have given its meal, I have often declared that 

 ' it must be all stomach.' And soon after being fed — and even 

 when well fed — it would, like Oliver Twist, cry for more. Grati- 

 tude it may have, but it is in an Irishman's sense : ' A lively 

 sense of favours to come.' When I have had no other food, I 

 offered it a young frog, which it swallowed with apparent relish. 



The climbing habit of the Cuckoo when young is much more 

 marked than in the adult. It will chmb about a cage much 

 "-iter the manner of a Parrot, and when I let it have the run of 

 the greenhouse, it could cling with great facility to the ledges. 



When it was being fed, it shook only one wing, lifting it 

 quite high instead of shaking both wings as most young birds 

 do ; it would follow me about in the garden when I was turning 

 over the earth to find worms. One day it left me and flew 

 to a neighbour's garden, thence to the main street and came 

 back to an ash tree at the bottom of my garden, from which 

 I could not dislodge it. After leaving it for an hour it flew 

 down when I began to turn over the earth in the garden^in 

 the expectation, I presume, of having more worms. 



Naturalist, 



