S9S Parasite Habits of the Night-jar, 



ground, and carries it to the nest made choice off in her bill * ; 

 as our own cuckoo must do, beyond a doubt, when it deposits 

 its egg in the nest of the wren, the chiff-chaff (Sylvia hippo- 

 lais), or the redstart (S. Phcenic^rus), as the narrow entrance 

 of these nests precludes any other mode of introducing it. 

 Mr. Masters, as above, asserts the same of the night-jar ; but 

 I have not the slightest doubt that the bird in question was 

 not a night-jar but a cuckoo, for which it may readily be mis- 

 taken, even by naturalists of considerable experience, as a 

 young cuckoo is so unlike the full-grown bird that it has led 

 to many mistakes. Block f, as well as Sanders j, and Sepp §, 

 who is usually accurate in the most minute particular, have 

 even mistaken the egg^ and figured the large oval white 

 marbled with brown egg of the night-jar for that of the 

 cuckoo, which is always small, rounded, and greenish, yel- 

 lowish, bluish, or greyish white, and always blotched, not 

 marbled, with olive or ash colour, being about the size of a 

 house-sparrow's, and very like it in colour, while the night- 

 jar's egg is larger than a blackbird's. |1 The young of the 

 night-jar does not differ from the full-grown bird ; but the 

 cuckoo does not attain its mature plumage till the third year ; 

 and, instead of the greyish lead blue of the old birds, is brown, 

 with numerous spots and cross-streaks of a reddish rust co- 

 lour, very similar to the markings of the night-jar. The two 

 birds, when full-grown, are also precisely of the same size, 

 namely, lOj in. in length. 4- The similarity, then, I think, is 

 tolerably complete. 



" As the young of the cuckoo," says Colonel Montague, 

 "differs so materially in the first year's plumage from the 

 adult, it may not be improper to give a description for the 

 information of those who may wish to know the distinction. 



" The irides are greyish ; the whole upper part of the 

 plumage is a mixture of dusky black and ferruginous in 

 transverse bars, except the forehead, and a patch on the 

 back of the head, which (in this specimen) is white ; and the 

 tips of the scapulars are pale : the feathers of the whole under 

 parts are sullied white, with distant transverse bars of dusky 

 black. In general each feather possesses two or three bars : 

 the sides of the neck and bi'east tinged with rufous : the 

 lateral feathers of the tail, and the inner webs of the quills, 

 more or less barred with white ; the coverts of the tail, which, 



* Wilson's Amer. Ornithology, ii. 46. 



f Besc. der Berlin, Gess. iv. tab. 18. fig. 1. X Naturf. xiv. s. 49. 



§ Sepp, Nederl. Vogel, li. 117. || Latham, Gen. Hist, of Bu-ds, iii. 261. 



\ Temminck, Manuel, p. 382—437. 



