THIRD SEASON (1920): RECORD 57 
next egg, unless a nest of No. 4 pair, which we had 
found being built two days ago, should contain an 
egg on the morrow, May 27. I had to go to 
London that day, but before leaving was glad to 
find that No. 4 Pipit had laid her first egg that 
morning. So it was arranged for Owen, in my 
absence, to be on the common by 4 p.m. so as to 
make reasonably certain, as we then thought, of 
seeing the Cuckoo lay her eighth egg. Un- 
fortunately a heavy thunderstorm intervened, and 
when Owen visited the nest at 5.45 p.m. he found 
that the Cuckoo had already been and left her egg 
in exchange for the one laid by the fosterer that 
morning. 
On Friday, May 28, the five days’ incubated 
eggs of No. 8 pair of Meadow Pipits were removed 
so as to restart them nest-building, our intention 
being to keep a steady stream of fresh fosterers’ 
nests coming on for the service of the Cuckoo. 
On Saturday, May 29, a nest of No. 6 pair, 
which had been found being built three days ago, 
contained that morning the first of the fosterer’s 
eggs. Believing — wrongly, as it turned out — that 
to be the only nest available, we felt confident that 
at last we were going to be rewarded by seeing the 
Cuckoo show us what she did and how she did it, 
