188 COW BUNTING. 
The most remarkable trait in the character of this species is, the 
unaccountable practice it has of dropping its eggs into the nests of 
other birds, instead of building and hatching for itself; and thus en- 
tirely abandoning its progeny to the care and mercy of strangers. 
More than two thousand years ago, it was well known, in-those 
countries where the bird inhabits, that the Cuckoo of Europe (Cuculus 
canorus) never built herself a nest, but dropped her eggs in the nests of 
other birds; but, among the thousands of different species that spread 
over that and other parts of the globe, no other instance of the same 
uniform habit has been found to exist, until discovered in the bird now 
before us. Of the reality of the former there is no doubt; it is known: 
to every school-boy in Britain; of the truth of the latter I can myself 
speak with confidence, from personal observation, and from the testi- 
mony of gentlemen, unknown to each other, residing in different and 
distant parts of the United States. The circumstances by which I 
became first acquainted with this peculiar habit of the bird are as 
follows : — ; 
I had, in numerous instances, found, in the nests of three or four 
particular species of birds, one egg, much larger, and differently 
marked from those beside it; I had remarked, that these odd-looking 
eggs were all of the same color, and marked nearly in the same man- 
ner, in whatever nest they lay, though frequently the eggs beside 
them were of a quite different tint; and I had also been told, in a 
vague way, that the Cow Bird laid in other birds’ nests. At length I 
‘detected the female of this very bird in the nest of the Red-eyed Fly- 
catcher, which nest is very small, and very singularly constructed. 
Suspecting her purpose, | cautiously withdrew without disturbing her; 
and had the satisfaction to find, on my return, that the egg which she 
had just dropped corresponded as nearly as eggs cf the same species 
usually do, in its size, tint, and markings, to those formerly taken 
notice of. Since that time, I have found the young Cow Bunting, in 
many instances, in the nests of one or other of these small birds; 1 
have seen these last followed by the young Cow Bird calling out 
clamorously for food, and often engaged in feeding it; and I have 
now, in a cage before me, a very fine one, which, six months ago, I 
took from the nest of the Maryland Yellow-Throat, and from which the 
figures of the young bird. and male Cow Bird in the plate were taken: 
the figure in the act of feeding it, is the female Maryland Yellow- 
Throat, in whose nest it was found. I claim, however, no merit for a 
discovery not originally my own, these singular habits having long 
that both are migratory, and both deposit their eggs in the nest of an alien. The 
Cow Bunting is polygamous ; and I strongly suspect that our Cuckoo is the same. 
Jn the deposition of ihe egg, the mode of procedure is nearly similar ; great uneasi- 
ness, and a sort of fretting, previously, with a calm of quiet satisfaction afterwards 
In both species we have beautiful provisions to insure the non-disturbance of the 
intruder by its foster-progeny : in the one, by a greater strength, easily overcoming 
and driving out the natural but more tender ‘young; in all Jove of the natural 
offspring being destroyed in the parents, and succeeded by a powerful desire to 
preserve and rear to maturity the usurper of their rights: in the other, where the 
young would, in some instances, be of a like size and strength, and where a combat 
might prove fatal in an opposite direction to the intentions of Providence, all ne- 
cessity of contest is at once avoided by the eggs of the Cow Bunting requiring ¢ 
shorter period to hatch than any of the birds chosen as foster-parents. — Ep. 
