362 Mr. Gordon Dalgleish,


be found there, and it is quite reasonable to suppose it to be the

same.


During wet and cold weather it calls little or not at all, and

I have frequently heard it at night, this being when the weather

was very hot. " He cries as he flies," say country people, and 011

alighting always prefaces his well known cry with a deep chuck-

ling note, and at times only the first syllable is pronounced

several times without the last being uttered at all. It was Jenner

who first drew attention to the newly-hatched Cuckoo ejecting its

foster brothers and sisters from the nest. The late Charles

Waterton, who was rather given to criticising — and not always

correctly — the statements of other naturalists, ridiculed the idea.

Nevertheless, Jenner was perfectly correct, as has since been

proved by actual photographs taken of the young Cuckoo in the

act of doing so.


There is one instance on record of the Cuckoo hatching its

own eggs,- f and it is probable that at times young Cuckoos, after

leaving the nest are tended by the true mother or other Cuckoos ;

but this wants confirming. Since writing the above I have found

a Cuckoo's egg in a Hedge Sparrow's nest that would — except, of

course for its larger size — have exactly matched that of a Pied

Wagtail, and in my own mind have no doubt it was originally

intended for the Wagtail's nest, but the Cuckoo failing to find one

dropped it in the first convenient nest she came across.


There are many good and competent ornithologists who

are against the theory of a Cuckoo matching its eggs with those

of the fosterer, and it is only fair to state in favour of these that

a good many eggs do not match, as will be seen by some of the

above notes; but putting these together with those that do, the

latter outnumber the former, and possible solutions to this may

be: (1) that the Cuckoo may not always find a suitable nest in

which to deposit the egg, or (2) that it is only at a comparatively

recent period that the Cuckoo has realised the importance of

matching its eggs with those of its victims. I am aware that

this is again mere hypothesis and may sound weak, but for want

of a better explanation I am forced to suggest this. The whole


* Ibis, 1889, p. 219.



