IOO 



Peacock : The Cuckoo — A Study. 



the many secrets of their strange life. I most strongly dis- 

 approve of the use of the gun in natural history work, excepting 

 on the rarest occasions, and then only when a master of the 

 highest repute, like Professor Newton or the late John Cordeaux, 

 is at hand to authorise and take full advantage of the slaughter/"" 



I have not time to describe with full particulars how I daily 

 watched a pair of Pied Wagtails {Motacilla lugubris Tern . ) building 

 their nest under a stone, just above a little ledge, about half-way 

 down the bank of the brook at Harrington, Northamptonshire. 

 This nest contained four eggs, when a hen Cuckoo visited the spot 

 about nine o'clock one morning, while its rightful owners were 

 away feeding. I had seen her about for some days, and, despite 

 morning mists and heavy dews, had determined, if possible, to 

 learn some of the secrets of her domestic life. She had been 

 flying about the neighbourhood, followed, chased I might say, 

 by a number of eager suitors, once as many as five together, 

 contending for the favour of wooing her, as she took short 

 flights from tree to wood or wood to hedge. At times the cock 

 birds cuckooed loudly, not infrequently on the wing, not more 

 than twenty yards from my place of observation. They also 

 used other strange notes of anger, surprise, pleasure, or endear- 

 ment, call them what you will, which are many of them quite 

 unknown even to the majority of bird-lovers. 



When the Cuckoo arrived at the beck side on the morning 

 I am telling you of, she spent some time in looking about and 

 prospecting, and finally flew down and examined the aperture of 

 the Wagtail's nest. Returning to the top of the bank, after 

 a period spent in sunning herself on the bare ground, she 

 deliberately laid her egg there. Then, taking it up in her bill, 

 she fluttered tenderly down the bank again, and placing it care- 

 fully in the nest of its chosen foster-parents, flew away. This 

 egg took fourteen days to incubate, the young Cuckoo being 

 the first bird to appear. On the fourth day it began to thrust 

 its foster-brothers from the nest, and was its only occupant by 

 the evening of the eighth. At tne end of three weeks it 

 fluttered out of the nest on to the bank, and remained about 



* If a Cuckoo must be shot, the contents of its crop and gizzard should 

 be carefully taken out and transferred to two wide-mouthed bottles, and 

 petroleum — common paraffin will do — added. It does not burn the colour 

 out as rapidly as spirits of wine. Alter being- tightly corked they should be 

 carefully packed, full notes being appended, and sent to the nearest 

 entomologist or lepidopterist, or to me, with a request to examine and 

 report on the species it contains in 'The Naturalist.' 



Naturalist. 



