CUCKOOS. 
9 
generally believed that this “vagrant Cuckoo” never 
does construct a nest, and that it always selects that 
of an insect-feeding bird wherein to deposit its egg. 
Among others the Hedge-chanter or H unnock, the 
Heed-bunting, the Titlark or IMeadow Pipit, the Pied 
AYagtail, the Yellow-hammer, etc., have been recorded 
as birds to whose charge the egg has been committed, 
but the first is said to be most commonly chosen. The 
nests of the G-reenfinch, Linnet, Whitethroat, and 
even of the AYren, have been mentioned as the place of 
deposit. AYhether the bird actually laija the egg in the 
nest has been doubted, and if the case of one having 
been assigned to the charge of the AYren be a fact, it 
is almost conclusive that she does not so deposit it in 
all cases, for the aperture of the AYren’ s nest is in the 
side, and not more than large enough to admit the 
Wren herself. The Cuckoo egg is remarkably small 
for the size of the bird, hardly equalling in this respect 
the size of the Skylark ; it is therefore somewhat in 
proportion to the small nests into which it is com- 
monly introduced. Its colour is white sprinkled with 
two shades of ash-coloured spots, mostly at the larger 
end. A Cuckoo has been observed to watch a pair of 
AA^agtails constructing their nest, and ere the structure 
was yet completed deposit its egg. The following day 
the female AYagtail commenced laying, without dis- 
turbing the strange egg, which was hatched at the 
same time with the rest, and the young Cuckoo soon 
contrived to have the whole nest to itself. 
It is a remarkable circumstance in the economy of 
the Cuckoo, that in its earliest infancy it should dis- 
play so much ingenuity, prescience, or whatever it 
