Birds. 



8195 



committed on the unfledged young of the foster mother seems unlikely: my own 

 notion is that the cuckoo seldom or never selects any nest except one where the hedge- 

 sparrow, titlark, wagtail, or other bird she finds has nearly finished laying the proper 

 number of eggs, and then the cuckoo, from that wonderful instinct implanted in all 

 God's creatures, lays her single egg only in each nest she visits on different days, and 

 probably ejects the whole of the eggs except her own, sucking each of the foster-parent's 

 eggs, if hungry, or getting rid of them with her bill. I can only authenticate one 

 case: when a schoolboy I was on a visit to a near relation in Northamptonshire, when, 

 in company wiih another boy birdsnesting in May, we found a hedgesparrow's nest, 

 which is the nest most frequently chosen by the cuckoo ; the nest contained three eggs, 

 but on visiting the nest again the hedgesparrow was found sitting very closely; 

 a fortnight or rather more afterwards the bird was driven off her nest, and only one 

 egg was there, which was hatched the next day, and turned out to be a cuckoo. 

 I have given a minute account of the rearing of this bird, and placing it in an osier- 

 twig cage, where it lived near the nest until it was six weeks' old; the history of this 

 bird is recorded in the ' Zoologist' for 1852 (Zool. 3424). That the cuckoo is fond of 

 the eggs of singing birds there is little doubt. I once found the nest of a bullfinch 

 with eggs ; this nest I intended to take when the young were old enough : I visited 

 the nest every morning, but at the very time when the old bird finished laying, on 

 visiting about 10 a.m. I found a cuckoo sitting almost upon the nest, moving her 

 head downwards: she was driven away, and on examining the nest the whole of the 

 eggs had disappeared, except a few broken fragments of the shells, and although the 

 shells were moist there was no mess made in the nest. It has been often said that as 

 soon as the laying of the singing birds, at the end of June, is over, the cuckoo be- 

 comes hoarse for want of suction : how far this is correct it is impossible for me to say ; 

 it is probably a vulgar error, but I have heard many times that the voice of a public 

 singer is best cleared by the white of a raw egg. To return to Mr. Saxby's theory of 

 depositing its eggs from the mouth by the cuckoo, I am certainly inclined to agree to 

 that theory, and it agrees with the account given by me this year in the ' Zoologist' 

 of a young cuckoo having been discovered in a robin's nest in a stone wall, and the 

 inhabitants of Norton Court, Gloucestershire, where the occurrence took place, were 

 puzzled to think how so large a bird as the cuckoo could have had access to the nest, 

 the aperture being only big enough for the robins, the foster parents, to enter. The 

 Creator has so willed it that the love of offspring shall be wanting in some of his 

 creatures, and we may say of that extraordinary bird, the cnekoo, what, in the beautiful 

 language of Job, is said of the ostrich: — " Gavest thou wings and feathers unto the 

 ostrich, which leaveth her eggs in the earth and warmeth them in the dust. She is 

 hardened against her young ones as though they were not her's ; her labour is in vain 

 without fear: because God has deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to 

 her understanding." Mr. Saxby says truly that the shy habits of the cuckoo are a 

 great bar to the discovery of its exact history, and I fear that different accounts may 

 verify the old story of the chameleon, — all nearly right. May not the hen cuckoo, 

 after all, employ different modes of depositing her egg according to the exigency of 

 her case, and the situation of the selected nest?— if. W.Newman; September 6, 

 1862. 



The Common Sandpiper a Diver. — Some days back I happened to wound a sand- 

 piper (Totanus kypoleucos), which, on flying some distance from the rock on which it 

 had been feeding, fell into the water. When my boat approached it, it dived in a 



