114 The Study of Animal Life part i 



Malays imagined that this was the work of the jealous 

 male, but it is the female's own doing. " She sits," 

 Marshall says, " securely hidden, safe from any carnivore 

 or mischievous ape or snake stealthily climbing, while the 

 male exerts himself lovingly to bring his mate those 

 delightful things in which the tropical forest is rich — fruits 

 above all, but occasionally a delicate mouse or juicy 

 frog. He flies with his booty to the tree and gives a 

 peculiar knock, which his mate knows as his signal, and 

 thrusts her beak through the narrow window, welcoming her 

 meal." At the end of the period of incubation, C. M. Wood- 

 ford says, "the devoted husband is worn to a skeleton." 



But animals, like men, have their vices, and birds, gener- 

 ally so ideal in their behaviour, are sometimes criminals. 

 Ornithologists assure us that the degree of parental care 

 varies not only in nearly related species, but also among 

 members of the same species. We need not lay much 

 stress on the fact that a bird .occasionally ' slips its egg 

 into a neighbour's nest, for when a partridge thus uses a 

 pheasant's rough bed, or a gull that of an eider-duck, it 

 is likely enough that the intruder had been disturbed 

 from her own resting-place when about to lay. We 

 approach something different in the case of the American 

 Ostrich {Rhea), the female of which is quite ready to 

 utilise a neighbour's burrow ; nor does the owner seem 

 to object, for all the brooding is discharged by the male, 

 " and it is no great art to be patient and magnanimous at 

 another's expense." Again, in the case of the American 

 Ani {Crotophaga am), of whose habits we unfortunately 

 know little, a number of females sometimes lay their eggs 

 in a common nest. 



We are so glad to hear the cuckoo's call in spring that 

 we almost forget the wickedness of the voluble bird. The 

 poets have helped us, for they have generously ideahsed, in 

 fact idolised, the cuckoo, the " darling of the springy" " a 

 wandering voice babbling of sunshine and of flowers," a 

 "sweet," nay more, a "blessed bird." But the cuckoos 

 have hoaxed the poets, for they are even worse than their 

 legendary reputation of being sparrow-hawks in disguise ; 



