NOTES AND QUERIES. 433 



Cuckoo. As I happened to make Mr. Wilson's acquaintance on the 

 first day of the gathering of the Fourth International Ornithologists' 

 Congress at London in June last, I lost no time in broaching this 

 subject. From Mr. Wilson's description of the nest and eggs, and also 

 from the site of the nest, I was certain that his bird was the Meadow- 

 Pipit, and not the Twite, as I assured him at the time. However, all 

 ornithologists and all searchers after truth in nature must feel grateful 

 to Mr. Wilson for losing no time in publishing his mistake and the 

 correction of it himself. In commenting on the above, Mr. Allen 

 Ellison (ante, p. 390) asks for an authentic instance of the depositing 

 of a Cuckoo's egg in the nest of a Twite. Unfortunately I have never 

 actually found one myself, although I have examined many scores of 

 Twites' nests, and in districts where Cuckoos are also plentiful. But 

 that the Cuckoo does occasionally deposit its egg in the nest of this 

 species is certain. Mr. James Ellison (a veteran birdnester), of 

 Steeton, near Keighley, has come across several such instances, and 

 I have seen some of the sets. In the year 1889 he showed me a 

 clutch of Twite's eggs containing also an egg of the Cuckoo (all 

 unblown and all slightly incubated) which he had just taken, and 

 later during the same day he pointed out the Twite's nest on the moor 

 whence he had taken them. Mr. James Ellison knows the Twite 

 and its nest and eggs well, as I can personally testify, and I have no 

 reason to doubt his word that altogether he has found Cuckoo's eggs 

 in Twites' nests on, at the least, half a dozen occasions, although he 

 has never met with a young Cuckoo in one of their nests. — Harry B. 

 Booth (Spring Koyd, Shipley, Yorks). 



The Cuckoo and its Foster-parents. — Probably the most complete 

 list of foster-parents of the Cuckoo compiled by any British naturalist 

 is one drawn up by Mr. W. Wells Bladen in 1896, of which I possess 

 a copy by his kindness. The catalogue contains in all one hundred 

 and forty-three species, in which the Twite is included, Mr. Bladen 

 himself possessing the egg taken in Yorkshire. I have never seen a 

 young Cuckoo in the nest of any of the Finches or Buntings, but our 

 collection here contains a Cuckoo- Greenfinch clutch (four) taken by 

 myself, and a few years ago a friend of ours had a Cuckoo's egg in a 

 Greenfinch's nest in his garden. There were five eggs of the foster- 

 parent, and my friend, who was a clever aviculturist, wished to see 

 whether the Greenfinches could rear a young Cuckoo. He was strongly 

 of opinion that they could not do so, but the nest was destroyed before 

 the egg hatched. Three times I have had the Cuckoo's egg with those 

 of the Bullfinch, all of which I believe to be perfectly genuine, though 

 Zool. 4th ser. vol. IX., November, 1905'. 2 l 



