CHAPTER IV 
THE THIRD SEASON (1920)*: PRELIMINARY NOTES 
With the coming of the spring of 1920 we had the 
following material acquired during 1918 and 1919 
upon which to work — 
We had found and taken nine eggs in 1918, and 
sixteen eggs in 1919, which were all undoubtedly 
the produce of Cuckoo A, because all the twenty- 
five eggs bear an unmistakable similarity to one 
another, and all were discovered in the same 
restricted area. Each egg was laid in a different 
nest, and yet twenty-four of the twenty-five nests 
were those of the Meadow Pipit, the one exception 
being that of a Skylark. There is also very little 
room to doubt that the two young Cuckoos found 
in 1919 in nests of Meadow^ Pipits were the offspring 
of Cuckoo A. 
Be it noted once more that all these nests were 
on a small common not quite a mile in circum- 
ference, more or less covered with short gorse and 
ideal as a nesting ground for Meadow Pipits. It is 
so far isolated as to be about three miles distant as 
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