THE CUCKOO. 359 



lark (Anthus pratensis) seems generally to be the receptacle of the 

 cuckoo's egg. George Elisor, Esq., of Ardress, county of Armagh, 

 in a communication to the Magazine of Natural History (vol. vi. 

 p. 83), mentions a tenant's son having taken home a young cuckoo 

 from a titlark's nest. " Two wrens who had a nest with eight 

 eggs in the eaves, and just above the window fronting the cage in 

 which the cuckoo was placed, made their way through a broken 

 pane, and continued to feed it for some time." The cuckoo was 

 at length taken away, when " the wrens repaired to their own 

 nest, and brought out the eggs that had been laid :" — we are not 

 informed how long they were absent from it. At Eockport, near 

 Belfast, a lady remarked, that when the cuckoo had attained 

 such a size that its foster-parents could not reach up food, they 

 alighted on its back to feed it. This proceeding was repeatedly 

 observed from the windows of the house, near to which the nest 

 was situated. The cuckoo is occasionally heard to call through 

 the night, when fine, though there may be no moonlight. On 

 the 8th of May, a dark morning, I noted that its call commenced 

 at half-past three o'clock. It was once heard at the Falls on the 

 16th of June, at a quarter past two o'clock in the morning. 



In April, 1834, I made the following communication to the 

 Zoological Society of London : — 



"May 28th, 1833. — On examination to-day of three cuckoos, 

 which were killed in the counties of Tyrone and Antrim within 

 the last week, I found them all to be in different stages of plumage. 

 One was mature ; — another (a female) exhibited on the sides of 

 the neck and breast the reddish-coloured markings of the young 

 bird, the remainder of the plumage being that of maturity ; — the 

 third specimen had reddish markings disposed entirely over it, 

 much resembling the plumage described by M. Temminck as as- 

 sumed by ' les jeunes tels qu'ils emigrent en automne ' (vol. i. 

 p. 383), but having a greater proportion of red, especially on the 

 tail-coverts, than is specified in his description of the bird at that 

 age. This individual proved on dissection to be a female, and did 

 not contain any eggs so large as ordinary-sized peas. The stomach, 



