55 



BIRD-HAUNTED LONDON 133 



the hen blue-tit returned with a caterpillar which she 

 popped into the mouth of the young oxeye and then 

 perched hard by, wiping her beak and preening her 

 feathers. Meanwhile the young oxeye, devoured with 

 curiosity, perched on the edge of the hole and peered 

 inside, its brethren fluttering and shouting with excite- 

 ment about him. This was the grouping — ^three young 

 oxeyes clambering about the nesting-box, one perched 

 at the edge of the hole, tilting its body within it to 

 investigate what lay within, and the adult oxeye 

 and blue-tit perched unconcernedly by within two 

 yards of each other. It was precisely as though one 

 family were paying a friendly visit upon another, an 

 agreeable humdrum affair it seemed to them, but what 

 a sensational drama for me ! It will no doubt appear 

 that this account is altogether too anthropomorphic. 

 I am relating these events as they occurred, giving 

 them a sub-human setting, because no other inter 

 pretation appears to me to fit the facts. " Awareness, 

 says Lloyd Morgan, "is ubiquitous throughout Nature, 

 if here in us in high measure, then in the oak and 

 the acorn, in the molecule and the atom, in their 

 several measures and degrees." 



But what intrigued me most of all was the feeding 

 of the young great tit by the parent blue tit. Have 

 we here a possible explanation of the solicitous 

 behaviour of its foster-parents to the voracious, ill- 

 conditioned, oafish young cuckoo foisted upon them ? 

 Parental care was an experiment perfected by natural 

 selection and riveted by the high survival utility it 

 conferred. Its importance for the perpetuation of the 

 species cannot be exaggerated. Now, I cannot believe 

 (as some observers hold) that the foster-parents are 

 unaware that the cuckoo is no relation of theirs. 

 They are aware enough of other birds, not to mention 

 the adult cuckoo which they constantly and rageingly 

 pursue. The a-sentient egg they do not know for 

 a fraud, but that the young cuckoo is not (say) 

 a young wagtail they know perfectly well. But the 

 foster-parents are naturally compelled to feed the 

 upstart because of the overmastering power and urge 



