568 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



CUCKOOS SUCKING EGGS. 



By J. H. Gurney, F.L.S., F.Z.S. 



I am glad Mr. Davenport has raised the question of Cuckoos 

 sucking eggs, which, with so many good observers, ought to be 

 definitely settled. To describe them as habitually sucking eggs 

 by choice, as is occasionally done in popular books, is a little 

 misleading, for their primary intent, it must certainly be con- 

 ceded, is to remove, not to eat them. The Cuckoo's throat is 

 very wide ; and if in the operation of moving eggs from some 

 Wagtail's nest an egg slips down, we have what in court would 

 be called presumptive evidence that they by no means object to 

 it. But to charge a Cuckoo with sucking the eggs of Pheasants 

 and Wood Pigeons, and even Grouse (as in the case of the game- 

 keeper cited by Mr. Storrs Fox), seems absurd. There is nothing 

 to induce a Cuckoo to enter the nests of these birds, and even if 

 they did their shells would be very tough for its feeble bill ; while 

 probably Cuckoos would not peck or impale an egg at any time, 

 but rather try to crush it between the two mandibles. I once 

 saw in an open meadow a Cuckoo rise from near a Skylark's 

 nest, from which it had no doubt retreated a few feet on hearing 

 my approach ; I immediately went up, and found a broken Lark's 

 egg in the nest. This was evidently the work of the Cuckoo, 

 which may even have been sucking the egg when I came up. 

 There were no other egg-shells in the grass ; and if that Cuckoo 

 could have been promptly shot, I should have expected to find 

 the remains of other Lark's eggs in its oesophagus. A gentleman 

 wrote in * The Field,' under the initials of W. B. G. (I have 

 unfortunately not kept the exact reference), that while he was 

 sitting with a friend in Dorsetshire, in a room looking out upon 

 an ivyclad wall, a Cuckoo passed the window. Knowing that a 

 Pied Wagtail had her nest on the wall, the two observers 

 approached the window, and watched the Cuckoo clinging to the 

 ivy barely four yards away from them. They distinctly saw her 



