INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOUR OF YOUNG BIRDS 91 
after an interval of forty-eight hours, we found the young 
cuckoo alone in the nest, and both the young pipits lying 
down the bank, about ten inches from the margin of the nest, 
but quite lively after being warmed in the hand. They were 
replaced in the nest beside the cuckoo, which struggled about 
Fic. 17.—Young Cuckoo ejecting nestling Meadow Pipit. (From Mrs. 
Hugh Blackburn's sketch in “ Birds from Moidart.”) 
until it got its back under one of them, when it climbed back- 
wards directly up the open side of the nest, and hitched the 
pipit from its back on to the edge. It then stood quite upright 
on its legs, which were straddled wide apart, with the claws 
firmly fixed halfway down the inside of the nest, among the 
interlacing fibres of which the nest was woven, and, stretching 
its wings apart and backwards, it elbowed the pipit fairly over 
