280



Mr. Hubert D. Astley,



dying away as he disappeared round the corner of the house. Then

I hurriedly dressed, took a light ladder, propped it up against the

pergola and peered in. A Pied Wagtail’s nest with two eggs, and

a Cuckoo’s ! all most neatly arranged.


She must, after depositing the egg from her mouth in the

nest, have been busily arranging things so that all should look well

on the Wagtail’s return. Of the latter I saw nothing. It was

curious that a Chaffinch should have taken up the cudgels. It was

an uncommon scene, which more than repaid one for being awoken

at 5.30 a.m.


But I certainly did, when I saw how busy she was, begin to

think is she “sucking little birds’ eggs to make her voice clear.” It

looked so very like it. The egg was bluish, but speckled. Deci¬

dedly blue in comparison with the colour of the Wagtail’s eggs, but

still not really blue, but as I have said of a bluish tint. I left it,

although I pity the fate of the poor baby Wagtails, which will

inevitably be hoiked into the moat, for the upright beam is on

the verge of it, the aperture in which the nest is built, facing it.


What doubles the interest of this episode of a May morning

is that the male Cuckoo was quite evidently excited about it ;

although such a thing has before now been observed. Whether the

female Cuckoo had just arrived with her mate, I don’t know. I am

inclined to think so : for even as I saw her she was a long time at

the nest; which I may add is eight feet from the ground.


And then people talk of the instinct of the lower creatures as

something that compels them to act, without possessing reasoning

power! In the first place, the Cuckoo would have to watch the

water-wagtails, for I cannot suppose she would search in places

where she would have to cling on with evident difficulty in obtaining

a foothold, unless she was sure there was a proper receptacle for her

egg. And on seeing the Wagtails building, she would continue to

watch. No human knew of the nest, although I for one constantly

walked past it, and constantly saw the Wagtails in its near vicinity.

Indeed I had gone so far as to wonder where they were building;

for last year they reared three broods in a hole in an old stone wall,

and this year the hole was vacant. Moreover the Cuckoo waits

until one or two eggs are laid by the foster-parents of its future off-



