192 BIRD BEHAVIOUR 



of any service, for just as Graham records in the 

 " Birds of lona and Mull " that he got Hooded 

 Crows to hatch Bantam eggs smeared with indigo, 

 so Mr. D. Dewar has got the House-Crow to hatch 

 an ordinary Hen's egg. 



In the Eoel, , by the way, the parasitism is not 

 so perfect as in the common Cuckoo ; the young 

 bird does not always eject the young Crows, and 

 the old birds feed it after it has been reared in the 

 Crows' nest. I have myself, however, seen the 

 Crows feeding a young Koel, which is curious, as 

 they hate and persecute the old bird. The Koel 

 avails itself of this to get ■ its egg deposited, the 

 male bird drawing off the Crows in pursuit of him, 

 while the female deposits her egg, presumably 

 laying it in the nest, this being convenient, while 

 the bird, like so many tropical fruit-eaters, seems 

 never to come to the ground, and so is not likely 

 to descend in order to lay there. 



Another case of incomplete parasitism among 

 Cuckoos is recprded of an African species, the 

 splendidly glittering little Emerald Cuckoo (Chryso- 

 coccyx smaragdineus), which Keulemans, the late 

 well-known bird artist, told BuUer, as related by, 

 the latter in his " Birds of New Zealand," is in 

 the habit of hatching its solitary egg, and then 

 leaving the young bird to the mercy of the bird 

 public ; passing birds, he said, attracted by the 

 cry of the Cuckoo nestling, dropped contributions 

 into its mouth, an episode he had himself often 

 witnessed on Prince's Island. 



