1 04 Peacock : The Cuckoo — A Study. 



She sucks little bird-eggs, 



To make her voice clear ; 

 And then she sings ' cuckoo ' 



Three months in the year. 



This ancient rhyme is noteworthy for two reasons. First, 

 it says the bird 'sings as she flies.' They do so in the earlier 

 part of the season, especially w T hen there is more than one male 

 courting- a single female bird. You may then have two or more 

 Cuckoos disregarding- your presence at twenty yards' distance, 

 and apparently calling one another ' bad names ' vig-orously as 

 they fly past you. Later on in the season, when they are fully 

 distributed, this is rarely the case, for the bird seeks shelter 

 from persecution and generally calls from cover. Secondly, the 

 verses assert ' She sucks little bird-eggs,' and for years I have 

 refused to believe this to be a fact, though shepherds and 

 labouring men of credit assured me that the Cuckoo sometimes 

 places the egg in the nest with her bill and sometimes gets into 

 the nest to lay it; sometimes, though rarely, casts the eggs out of 

 the nest she finds there; and more rarely still, is caught in the 

 act of sucking other birds' eggs. The evidence has now grown 

 so strong against the female bird that I can no longer reject it 

 as untrustworthy. Accurate and painstaking friends tell me 

 they have seen these things too. Then the Rev. J. G. Tuck, of 

 Tostock Rectory, printed the following statement and forwarded 

 it to me : — 



That the Cuckoo does at times turn out eggs to make room for her own 

 is pretty certain, for, as already recorded, last June I put up by way of 

 experiment a Greenfinch's nest with three fresh eggs in the ivy on our 

 garden wall. From this nest the egg-s were all turned out, undoubtedly by 

 the Cuckoo, as I found one egg lying broken on the ground below, and the 

 Cuckoo's egg left in its place. , 



Again. Miss L. M. Forster comes forward with most circum- 

 stantial evidence in a case where there is no chance of a mistake. 

 She writes : — 



For two years running, 1897 and 1898, a Pied Wagtail built its nest in 

 the greenhouse of a lady who lives near Guildford, and laid its eggs there. 

 Each year a Cuckoo deposited an egg in the nest. The second spring, 

 1898, days after the Cuckoo had placed her egg in the nest, the gardener 

 watched her trying to effect an entrance to the greenhouse, and eventually 

 he saw her go in and come out again ; after she had gone he examined the 

 nest and found the young Cuckoo only just emerged from the shell, and 

 with part of the shell still on its back, while all the young Wagtails and one 

 egg were lying on the shelf ; one young bird not being quite dead. The 

 remarkable part of this experience is, that it shows the Cuckoo must have 

 kept some count of time, and known when her egg was likely to be hatched. 



Naturalist, 



