o?i the Cuckoo. 359


the authority of a Mr. Rillman, Superintendent of the Park.

Mr. Mouritz also kindly sent me the following notes of nests

personally known to himself that contained Cuckoo's eggs: —

Chaffinch (Reigate, 17/5/1S84 and '93). Willow Wren and

Nightingale. There are also two records of Cuckoo's eggs in

Pheasant's nests {Countryside, Vol. II., No. 30). These of course

were a gross mistake on the part of the Cuckoo and may be

dismissed without further comment. I myself on two occasions

have found eggs laid on the ground ; the birds that laid them

probably being disturbed just after. The earliest and latest

Cuckoo's eggs that I can find any record of, is April 21st

(A. P. Macklin) and July 7th (Co2intryside,Mo\. III., No. 36). A

Cuckoo before depositing her egg will frequently eject all the

other eggs in the nest, and a deserted nest has frequently been

found to contain a Cuckoo's egg. It has been found that Cuckoo's

eggs deposited in the nests of Chaffinch, Bullfinch, Chiff-chaff,

and Nightingale do not resemble those of the fosterer's and the

explanation to this is that the Cuckoo, unable to find a suitable

nest, is forced to place it in one of these rather than none at

all. Mr. A. P. Macklin writes: — . ... "I found the nest of a

Hedge Sparrow, and a few yards beyond, that of a Garden

Warbler both containing incomplete clutches of eggs. On re-

visiting the spot some days later I found that the Garden

Warbler's nest had disappeared, but in that of the Hedge

Sparrow, a Cuckoo's egg of the most pronounced type but still

unmistakably a Cuckoo's egg had been deposited. It is

reasonable to assume that this was intended for and would have

been placed in the Garden Warbler's nest had this not in the

meantime disappeared. A close observer, Mr. Anthony Collett,

writes : — " There is another theory that Cuckoos are split up into

a number of families or clans, each of which is attracted to some

particular species of small bird, and the eggs laid by the Cuckoo

specially resemble the eggs of the small bird in question. This,

on the whole seems very probable, though it is unlikely that the

hen Cuckoo never drops her egg into a different sort of nest to

the one in which she herself was brought up in."


Does the male Cuckoo first find the nest in which the

female is to place her egg? To this query personally I believe



