28 
THE CUCKOO’S SECRET 
four of the fosterer’s eggs about one day incubated. 
Still later, A 15 was discovered in another Meadow 
Pipit’s nest with four eggs about three or four days 
incubated. This nest was in a large patch of evenly 
growing gorse, and a week previously we had 
searched in vain for a nest here, but it was not 
discovered until the bird was flushed to-day. 
On June 23 I found A 16 in a Meadow Pipit’s 
nest. The egg was intact but firmly stuck to the 
bottom of the nest by the contents of the two or 
three broken Pipit’s eggs of which only fragments of 
the shells remained. The nest, and egg when 
blown, bore every appearance of having been 
deserted for some time between a week and a 
fortnight.* On the 28th another Meadow Pipit’s 
nest was found containing A 17 in the shape of a 
young Cuckoo about two days old. One of the 
Pipit’s eggs was still in the nest and three others 
were lying outside. 
* I am of the opinion that in this instance the female Meadow 
Pipit was brooding her eggs — as is so often the case — when the 
Cuckoo approached to lay, and instead of flying off fluttered on 
the nest and, in her attempts to ward off the Cuckoo, broke her 
own eggs. Or possibly when the Cuckoo went on to the nest, 
the Pipit followed her, as we saw in the case of the filming of the 
Cuckoo’s 14th egg in 1921, and between them they broke the 
eggs, and the Cuckoo’s egg being laid in the nest would naturally 
adhere to the nest and its broken contents. 
