AN IRRESISTIBLE BEGGAR 189 



feeding on the part of the parents. A very ravenous 

 young bird appeared always to be on top of the 

 rest, and to get nearly all contributions till he 

 subsided and another got the opportunity of taking 

 his place. The Calcutta pair of Dabchicks, how- 

 ever, fed their young fairly, and I have seen a 

 young bird pecked instead of fed when it clamoured 

 too soon, for a second helping. 



The fact that the young Cuckoo is assiduously 

 fed long after it can fly is probably due to the 

 insistent quality of its appeal ; birds which have 

 not reared one will feed it, and on one occasion 

 when a young Cuckoo was confined in a Parrot- 

 cage in the inside compartment of the Western 

 Aviary at the Zoo, a Black Tanager (Tachyphonus 

 melanoleucus), a South American species which 

 could have had no knowledge of such a bird, never- 

 theless squeezed through the bars to feed it. 



The range of foster-parents in the case of the 

 cdmmon Cuckoo is wider than in any other, and 

 may partly account for the wide range of the species 

 itself, Cuckoos generally being quite as tropical as 

 Parrots or Humming-birds, though in view of the 

 extension into North America of the non-parasitic 

 Cuckoos, this is evidently not the only explanation. 

 The favourite fosterer is the Titlark or Meadow- 

 Pipit, and presumably it is due to its dependence 

 on this bird that the Cuckoo ranges out on to the 

 moorlands, a habitat for which it, like most of the 

 family, is utterly unsuited, being an awkward mover 

 on the ground, though on trees it hops more actively 



