OCTOBER 211 



Certain it is that it has been seen to hammer in the 

 skulls of small and defenceless birds, and to make a 

 bonne bouche of their brains. Some bird, probably 

 a tit, pecks open the oak-apple galls, to obtain 

 the fat, white grub which occupies the central cavity. 

 Here, then, is a small problem which suggests 

 others. 



Does the Cuckoo suck eggs ? We believe the well- 

 known lines 



The cuckoo is a merry bird ; he sings as he flies, 

 He brings us good tidings and tells us no lies, 

 He sucks little birds' eggs to make his voice clear, 

 He only sings " cuckoo " three months in the year, 



contain an unjustified aspersion. The cuckoo's diet 

 consists largely of caterpillars, chiefly hairy ones, such 

 as those of the oak-eggar and fox-moth. Should not 

 the responsibility for the sucked eggs which one 

 finds, sometimes so neatly emptied that they will 

 pass muster in a collection, be laid at the door of the 

 jay or magpie ? The keeper's regular bait for a Jay, 

 when he arranges a few upright sticks to support a 

 little platform of sods which contains a well-hidden 

 trap, is a thrush's egg. Nothing, too, is more fatal 

 to the magpie than a hen's egg into which a few 

 grains of strychnine have been introduced, but it 

 must be partially hidden ; if too evident it will excite 

 suspicion. 



