88 
NATURE NOTES 
and it seems strange that the bird, who would not allow anything 
to be beside it only a few days previously, now allowed a young 
bird to live in harmony with it. When the young hedge- 
sparrow was put into the nest it would be about eight days old 
and the cuckoo ten or eleven days. 
About the same time as the above-mentioned incidents took 
place, Mr. Craig found another cuckoo’s egg in a meadow-pipit’s 
nest, and this bird ejected all the four pipit’s eggs, one of them 
being thrown out when the bird was not twenty-four hours old. 
One of the photographs taken illustrates the young cuckoo with 
the egg in the hollow of its back. 
In conclusion, I may state that the young cuckoo has a 
depression on the back, which gives a more secure lodgment to 
the young bird or egg, and the back is broad considering the 
size of the bird. It makes considerable use of its wings in 
steadying the bird on its back, and to prevent it from rolling 
back into the nest again, as well as in examining, as it were, a 
bird or an egg in the nest. 
W. Percival Westell, M.B.O.U. 
Author of''A Year with Nature," &‘e. 
A WEEK-END TRIP ON THE CAM. 
lAVING recently spent a most enjoyable week-end trip 
I in a canoe on the river Cam, I feel tempted to commit 
to paper some of the more interesting observations 
made by me at that time. 
On June 8 a friend and myself, freed from the horrors of 
examinations, hired a double canoe, stored with provisions, rugs, 
cushions, tobacco, lime-juice, fruit, &c., and started from 
Cambridge at mid-day. Our first “ bivouac ” was to be a spot 
about six miles up the river, so that we had ample time to look 
for birds’ nests en route. We scarcely, however, did much in 
this way, except to find a swallow’s nest with three eggs in 
a boat-shed running down to the water’s edge, until we came 
to a large copse extending for some hundred yards along the 
bank. Here we moored the canoe, and were quickly rewarded 
by hearing the clatter of a stock-dove as she left an ivy-clad 
willow tree. My friend was soon on the summit, and after a few 
moments’ search was rewarded by discovering the nest with its 
two white eggs hidden in a hole covered by ivy ; this was a 
good start, and gave us hope of further success. The copse 
was not, however, very rich in bird life, though we found a 
turtle-dove’s nest with two eggs, a spotted flycatcher’s with five, 
a blue-tit’s and other common kinds. 
Embarking again we continued our journey, but in hauling 
the boat overland, owing to a weir obstructing our course, we 
