572 HABITS OF THE CUCKOO. 



passed through the severities of winter ; and as a heartless mother, an abandoner of its 

 offspring, and an occupier of other homes it has been subjected to general reprobation. 

 As is usual in such cases, both opinions are too sweeping; for the continual cry of 

 "Cuck-oo! cuck-oo !" however agreeable it may be on the first hearing, soon becomes 

 monotonous and fatiguing to the ear ; and the mother Cuckoo is not so far lost to all 

 feelino-s of maternity as to take no thought for her young, but ever remains near the place 

 where it has deposited her egg and seems to keep watch over the foster-parents. 



It is well known that the female Cuckoo does not make any nest, but places her egg 

 in the nest of some small bird, and leaves it to the care of its unwitting foster-parents. 

 Various birds are burdened with this charge, such as the hedge-warbler, the pied-wagtail, 

 the meadow-pipit, the red-backed shrike, the blackbird, and various finches. Generally, 

 however, the three first are those preferred. Considering the size of the mother-bird, the 

 e^o- of the Cuckoo is remarkably small, being about the same si7e as that of the skylark, 

 although the latter bird has barely one-fourth the dimensions of the former. The little 

 birds, therefore, which are always careless about the colour or form of an egg, provided 

 that it be nearly the size of their own productions, and will be perfectly contented with an 

 eoTT-shaped pebble or a scraped marble, do not detect the imposition, and hatch the inter- 

 loper together with their own young. 



Tlie general colour of the Cuckoo's egg is mottled reddish grey, but the tint is very 

 variable in different individuals, as I can testify from personal experience. It has also 

 been noted that the colour of the egg varies with the species in whose nest it is to be 

 placed, so that the egg wliich is intended to be hatched by the hedge-warbler is not 

 precisely of the same colour as that which is destined for the nest of the pipit. 



Several experienced naturalists now lean to the opinion that the female Cuckoo really 

 feels a mother's anxiety about her young ; and this theory — a somewhat recent one — is 

 corroborated by an account kindly sent to me by a lady, at that time unknown to me. 

 A young Cuckoo had been hatched in the nest of some small bird, and after it was able to 

 leave the nest for a short time^^ was taken under the protection of a female Cuckoo, 

 who had been hovering about the place, and which at once assumed a mother's authority 

 over the young bird, feeding it and calling it just like any other bird. 



On inquiring whether the old Cuckoo ever helped the young one back into the nest, 

 nothing could be ascertained. The children of the family, who were naturally interested 

 in the affair, used sometimes to pick up the young bird and put it back into the nest, but 

 it was often found in its warm home without human intervention, and as it was too 

 helpless and timid to perform such a feat unaided, the natural assumption was that the 

 old bird had given her assistance. 



The mode by which the Cuckoo contrives to deposit her eggs in the nest of sundry 

 birds was extremely dubious, until a key was found to the problem by a chance discovery 

 made by Le Vaillant. He had shot a female Cuckoo, and on opening its mouth in order 

 to stuff it with tow, he found an egg lodged very snugly within the throat. 



When hatched, the proceedings of the young Cuckoo are very strange. As in process 

 of time it would be a comparatively large bird, the nest would soon be far too small to 

 contain the whole family ; so the young bird, almost as soon as it can scramble about the 

 nest, sets deliberately to work to turn out all the other eggs or nestlings. This it accom- 

 plishes by getting its tail under each egg or young bird in succession, wriggling tliem on 

 to its back, and then cleverly pitching them over the side of the nest. It is rather curious 

 that in its earlier days it only throws the eggs over, its more murderous propensities not 

 being developed until a more advanced age. 



There seems to be some peculiarity in the nature of the Cuckoo which forces other 

 birds to cater for its benefit, as even in the case of a tame and wing-clipped Cuckoo, which 

 was allowed to wander about a lawn, the little birds used to assemble about it with food 

 in their mouths, and feed it as long as it chose to demand their aid. 



Sometimes two Cuckoo's eggs have been laid in the same nest ; when they are 

 hatched there is a mutual struggle for the sole possession of the nest. Dr. Jenner, in 

 his well-known and most valuable paper on this bird, gives the following account of such 

 a strife. 



