37fi MR. J. H. GURNEY ON THE ECONOMY OF THE CUCKOO. 
of two Hedge Sparrows’ eggs and a young Hedge Sparrow being 
ejected from a Hedge Sparrow’s nest in which was a young Cuckoo, 
on the forenoon of the very day on which that Cuckoo was hatched. 
Its accomplishment so soon after the Cuckoo was hatched is 
unusual, and in favour of its being the act of the old Cuckoo, as in 
three or four hours the Hedge Sparrow could not have conceived 
much preference for the parasite over her own children one would 
think.* 
Nestling Cuckoos. 
It is evident that young Cuckoos can thrive and grow big upon 
anything, for as they have so many foster-parents, it follows they 
must be nourished on many foods, and those which get the most 
grow quickest. Many naturalists have marvelled at the amount of 
food a young Cuckoo can consume, and the fascinated dupes its 
parents and even other birds are never tired of feeding it. In one, 
Mr. T. E. Gunn found a piece of cord possibly picked up, but more 
likely given by the fosterer in mistake for a caterpillar. It is hardly 
a figure of speech which led one observer to say the little Cuckoo 
seemed to grow while he watched it, all the more remarkable when 
we consider the small egg it has come out of, and small wonder if 
one can eat sixty-five Meadow Brown Butterflies and a hen’s egg 
in a day, and another fifty Caterpillars of Papilio brassicce, and grow 
fat on the fare ; yet they drink nothing. To Aristotle and Pliny the 
Cuckoo was a puzzle, but Pliny well knew its voracity, and with 
justice accused it of being a sleek, greedy bird, which monopolised 
the food intended for its unhappy brethren. Whether a Cuckoo which 
has been fostered by a Pied Wagtail would, in after life, have exactly 
* I am indebted to Mr. John Paterson, of Glasgow, for a similar 
experience related by a gentleman in ‘The Glasgow Evening Times’ of 
December 12th, 1897. He had found a Titlark’s nest with a Cuckoo’s egg 
in it and three Titlark’s eggs. On Saturday night, two of the young Titlarks 
were out of the shell, and another just coming out of the shell, the Cuckoo’s 
egg being then intact. On Sunday morning, at six o’clock, the other Titlark’s 
egg was hatched out, and the Cuckoo’s egg split up, and a young Cijckoo 
in the act of coming out of it. At ten o’clock, the young Cuckoo was alone 
in the nest, and the three young Titlarks were lying at the root of the whin 
bush in which the nest was built ; he put them back, but on returning to 
the nest at half past one found them thrown out again. If this nest could 
only have been watched betweeu the hours of six a.m. and ten a.m., the 
Cuckoo, or the parent Titlark, would have been convicted. 
