116 



CUCKOO. 



same colour; that, after the first moult, the males have a deep olive 

 ash-colour, and the red spots on the male disappear altogether ; while 

 in the female they continue to the most advanced age, when it puts on 

 the plumage of an old male, of which change M. Payrandeau possesses 

 a specimen. 1 Vieillot, the father of French ornithologists, as well as 

 Meyer, Jules Delamothe, and Baillon of Abbeville, agree in the same 

 opinion. M. Temminck, and Dr. Latham, in his last work, regard the 

 Red Cuckoo as the young of the common species of one year old.* 2 



This bird comes to us early in the spring, and almost invariably leaves 

 us by the first of July : the females may sometimes remain somewhat 

 later, not having deposited all their eggs. We have killed this sex as 

 late as the twenty-sixth of June, from which we took a matured egg, 

 which weighed forty-four grains ; the colour white, sprinkled with two 

 shades of ash-coloured spots, mostly at the larger end. The male 

 generally comes to us earlier than the female : their food is chiefly in- 

 sects, particularly caterpillars, or the larvce of all kinds of lepidopterous 

 insects, and not the smooth sorts only, as some have imagined ; for 

 we have found the stomach of this bird lined with the hairs of the rough 

 ones more than once. 



*A young Cuckoo, brought to Colonel Montagu in the month of July, 

 just as it could fly, was, by great care, kept alive till the fourteenth of 

 December. It had, during that time, two or three attacks of dysentery, 

 from which it recovered by having chalk and ginger given to it ; and 

 during the time it lived, no change was observed to have taken place in 

 its plumage. For two months after this bird was caught it never 

 attempted to feed itself by picking ; and even to the last moment seemed 

 to prefer being fed by the hand of its mistress, rather than have the 

 trouble of picking up its food, of which it was extremely choice. 

 Nothing appeared to be acceptable as a substitute for insects except raw 

 beef. Flies it would eagerly devour ; but its most delicious morsel was 

 any species of hairy caterpillar ; these it seized with avidity, shook them 

 to death, and softened by passing several times through the bill, till 

 they were perfectly pliant, when it would swallow whole the largest of 

 the caterpillar of the egger, or drinker moths. 



Of strangers it was extremely fearful, fluttering in its cage to avoid 

 their attentions ; but it would quietly suffer itself to be handled and 

 caressed by a young lady, who had been its kind benefactress, appearing 

 to like the warmth of her hand to its feet. 



The feet of the Cuckoo, like those of the woodpecker, appear to be 



1 Bulletin des Sciences Nat. for 1823. 2 Architecture of Birds, p. 359. 



