50 Life History of Common Cuckoo. 



small, and moreover domed.* Among the sixty nests 

 patronised were the unlikely ones of the butcher-bird, 

 jay, and magpie — all either bird or egg destroyers. 

 This may seem to reflect on the cuckoo's stupidity ; 

 and the bird certainly exhibits deplorable ignorance 

 of the fitness of things when it deposits its egg in 

 the nest of the diminutive goldcrest, or the cumber- 

 some one of the cushat. A goldcrest might con- 

 veniently be stowed away in the gape of a young 

 cuckoo without the latter detecting that the morsel 

 was much more than a normal supply. The nests in 

 which the eggs of cuckoos are most frequently found 

 are those of the meadow-pipit, hedge-sparrow, and 

 reed-warbler. Now the eggs of these birds vary to 

 a very considerable degree ; and the question arises 

 whether the cuckoo has the power of assimilating the 

 colour of its egg to those among which it is to be 

 deposited. Certain eminent continental ornitholo- 

 gists claim that this is so, but the facts observed in 

 England hardly bear out the conclusion. Brown 

 eggs have been found among the blue ones of the 

 the hedge-sparrow, redstart, wheatear ; among the 

 green and grey ones of other birds ; and the purely 

 white ones of the wood-pigeon and turtle-dove. The 

 cuckoo's egg is brown, and it must be admitted that 

 the great majority of the nests which it patronises 

 contain eggs more or less nearly resembling its own. 

 There is a general family likeness about those laid by 

 the bird, not only in the same clutch, but from year 

 to year. Admitting that the eggs of the cuckoo, as 

 a species, vary more than those of other birds, it is 

 yet probable that the same female invariably lays 



* Exactly double sixty Mr. Bidwell gives. 



