BIBBS IN A VILLAGE. 
73 
sea ; but to distinguish it with the eye, you must 
look away to a distance of some yards in an open 
unshaded place, when it will become visible as fine 
glinting lines, quivering and serpentining upwards, 
fountain- wise, from the surface. All at once I was 
startled by hearing the loud importunate hunger- 
call of a young cuckoo quite close to me. Moving 
softly up to the low hedge and peering over it, I 
saw the bird perched on a long cross stick, which 
had been put up in a cottage garden to hang 
clothes on; he was not more than three to four 
yards from me, a fine young cuckoo in perfect 
plumage, his barred under-surface facing me. 
Although seeing me as plainly as I saw him, he 
exhibited no fear, and did not stir. Why should 
he, since I had not come there to feed him, and, to 
his inexperienced avian mind, was only one of the 
huge terrestrial creatures of various forms that 
move heavily about in roads and pastures, and are 
nothing to birds ? But his foster-parent, a hedge- 
sparrow, was suspicious, and kept at some distance 
with food in her bill ; but very soon, excited by 
his imperative note, she flitted shyly to him, and 
deposited a minute caterpillar in his great gaping 
yellow mouth. It was like dropping a bun into 
the monstrous red mouth of the hippopotamus of 
the Zoological Gardens. But the hedge-sparrow 
was off and back again with a second morsel in a 
