38 WILD LIFE IN CHINA. 



which build no nest and do nothing for the support of their 

 own young. This is, indeed, a wonderfully strange trait, 

 though one which lack of space prevents our discussing. 

 Everybody knows that the cuckoo abandons its young to 

 foster-parents. The female lays her egg on the ground, and 

 then taking it in her mouth deposits it in the nest of any 

 suitable bird, usually, it is belived, in the nest of the same 

 kind as she herself was hatched in, for her eggs approach, 

 in colour and size, those of her foster-mother. These things are 

 none the less marvellous for being true. Hedge-sparrows, wag- 

 tails, yellow-hammers, and some others are most frequently 

 patronized. I have seen young cuckoos in the nests of hedge- 

 sparrows and wag-tails, and once, though I have not seen such 

 a fact recorded in any book, I found one in the nest of a robin. 



What happens when the young are hatched is known 

 with great accuracy. The young cuckoo proceeds, before its 

 eyes are open, to eject all its companions, be they young birds 

 or unhatched eggs. To aid in this diabolical operation there 

 is a curious hollow in the back into which its companions are 

 gradually worked and then shouldered over the edge of the 

 nest to die beneath ! This hollow fills up in twelve days, but 

 ere that is past the young cuckoo is " monarch of all he 

 surveys." His are all the tit-bits which a pair of very as- 

 siduous foster-parents can bring, and the consequence is 

 that he grows at a prodigious rate, and soon surpasses in 

 size the tiny foster robin, or wagtail. Long before it is fully 

 fledged, however, its own parents have returned to warmer 

 climes. An old rhyme, speaking not very correctly, says of 

 the cuckoo, "In June, he alters his tune: In July he prepares 

 to fly. And in August, go he must." As a matter of fact the 

 adults usually leave about the end of the first week in July. 

 A strange thing respecting them is that males are far more 

 numerous than females. There is no pairing therefore, for 

 the females are polyandrous, as may be observed frequently 

 by those who watch. It is the male which has the familiar 

 cry. The sexual call of the female is a gurgle, not loud, but 

 perfectly eff^ective for its purpose. 



The cuckoo is the first bird yet to come before us which 

 has not the common arrangement of toes, three in front and 

 one behind. He. on the contrary, has the picarian foot, like 

 that of the woodpecl<ers, with two toes before and two 

 behind. Cuckoos love to take their stand on some prominent 

 object, and ma\' be seen in considerable numbers on the tele- 

 graph wires and posts along the Siberian railway, about the 

 beginning of June. The first 1 heard in Shanghai this season 

 was on the sixth of May, about eight o'clock in the morning. 

 Since then the wooded gardens in the Western district have 

 echoed their cries continuallv. 



