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I have given an exhaustive account of this fine Hawk because it is one of our most conspicuous 
birds, being met with in all localities ; but, I am sorry to say, it is becoming perceptibly scarcer in 
many parts of the country, owing to its wholesale destruction by farmers. On one occasion I counted 
no less than ninety-six heads nailed up in imposing rows against the wall of an outhouse on a small 
sheep-station. This crusade arises from the popular belief that the Harrier attacks and kills young 
lambs. That it occasionally does so in the case of weaklings is beyond doubt, but I am of opinion 
that the mischief done is very much exaggerated. In my history of the species I have endeavoured 
to vindicate its character as a useful bird. 
Fam. CUCULID^l . — Of this family we have in New Zealand one representative of each of 
the two well-known genera Eudynamis and Chrysococcyx. Like Cuckoos in general, both of these 
species are parasitic in their habits of nidification, and, as a rule, both of them find their dupe in 
the Grey Warbler (Gerygone flaviventris), the builder of a pensile, dome-shaped nest. Mr. Potts has 
called attention to the frequency with which torn nests of this species are met with, and suggests that 
this may be due to the endeavours of the Cuckoo to make these nests available for their purpose ; 
yet this view is hardly compatible with the fact that whenever the Cuckoo’s egg is found among those 
of the Warbler, the nest is always in perfect condition. But how the intrusive egg is deposited by 
its owner is certainly a mystery, particularly in the case of such a bird as the Long-tailed Cuckoo * *. 
Mr. Kainbow writes that, as the result of much observation, he is firmly convinced that the English 
Cuckoo, after laying its egg, takes it up in its foot and deposits it in the nest of its victim. The 
process, he argues, cannot be satisfactorily accounted for in any other way. In connection with this 
I may mention the circumstance that a friend of mine in New Zealand shot a Long-tailed Cuckoo 
which appeared to be carrying some object in its bill. On picking up the bird, he found a broken 
egg, of a creamy-wliite colour and, so far as he could judge, of a size corresponding to its own. 
Mr. Rainbow’s view seems to find confirmation in the following statement, which appeared 
in ‘The Ibis,’ 1867, p. 874 : — “The long -presumed opinion of the Cuckoo first laying her egg on the 
ground and then carrying it off for deposition in the nest of some other bird, has of late been singularly 
confirmed by actual observation. In the German periodical ‘Her Zoologische Garten’ for 1866 
(pp. 374, 375) appears a note by Herr A. Muller, stating that the author watched a Cuoulus canorus 
through a telescope, saw her lay an egg on the grass, take it in her bill, and deposit it in the 
nest of a Motacilla alba ! ” 
The feeding of the unwieldy young of the Long-tailed Cuckoo by the diminutive foster-parent 
and the appropriation of the Warbler’s nest by the young of the Shining Cuckoo are such droll 
phases of bird-life that I have introduced both incidents into the Plates illustrating those species. 
One of my best correspondents says : — “ It is not a difficult task to find the Warbler’s nest when 
the Long-tailed Cuckoo is about to lay her egg or immediately afterwards. It is laid very early in 
and likewise by the much darker colour of its wing-coverts. In the otherwise excellent drawing, from the pencil of Mr. Wolf, 
which appeared in the * Proceedings ’ (Z. c.), these distinguishing features are not sufficiently shown ; nor does Mr. Gurney 
give the necessary prominence to them in his descriptive account, his object having been (as he has since informed me) to point 
out the distinguishing characters of the species as compared with C. maillardi (Verreaux), rather than with 0. gouldi. 
* The late Mr. Henry Mair met with this species, with which he was quite familiar in New Zealand, during a visit to 
Danger Island. It also occurs at Samoa, but, according to the Kev. S. Whitmee, it is less abundant there than in many of the 
Polynesian Islands. 
