Spanish haunts, common in New Castile, La Mancha, 

 and certain parts of Estremadura and Andalucia ; whilst 

 in the eastern provinces it is comparatively scarce, and 

 to the north of the Sierra de Guadarrama decidedly 

 rare. In the neighbourhood of Madrid these birds 

 arrive about the end of March or early in April, and 

 at once commence to lay their eggs in the nests of the 

 Common Magpie ; the first two eggs found by us were 

 taken from a nest of this bird in a high oak tree in the 

 grounds of the Casa de Campo, a royal demesne just 

 outside the walls of Madrid, on April 12, 1865; 

 this nest contained no other eggs. It is, of course, 

 impossible to discover how many eggs go to form 

 the usual complement laid by this Cuckoo; I quote 

 on this subject my notes on the ornithology of 

 Spain, in ' The Ibis,' referring to the neighbourhood of 

 Aranjuez : — On April 29, 1865, we found three nests 

 of Magpie all containing eggs of this Cuckoo, which is 

 extremely common in this locality; in one nest were 

 eight eggs of the Magpie and three of the Cuckoo, in 

 another one of the former and three of the latter bird, 

 and in the third two of each species. In almost every 

 case in which we found eggs of both species together 

 the Cuckoo's eggs were more advanced towards hatching 

 than those of the rightful proprietors of the nest. We 

 took altogether some forty or more eggs of the present 

 species near Aranjuez, and might certainly have trebled 

 the number. On one occasion only did we find a 

 Cuckoo's egg elsewhere than in a Magpie's nest, this 

 exception was a single egg found in a Raven's nest with 

 five of those of that species ; the greatest number of 



