XXVII. 
NOTE ON THE REARING OF CUCKOOS AT CASSIOBURY, 
WATFORD. 
Ey John Powell. 
Bead at Watford, 12 th April, 1889 . 
(Communicated by Dr. A. T. Brett.) 
About the middle of June, I found a young cuckoo in a wagtail’s 
nest, in ivy growing on a wall close to the front door of Cassiobury 
House. I took it with the nest with the intention of rearing it. 
I fed it on raw beef and hard-boiled eggs till it could feed itself, 
which it began to do about a fortnight after I took it, and two 
days after that it died, hut it had become so tame that I could 
carry it about on my finger without its attempting to fly away, 
and when I took it to its cage it would hop quietly from my finger 
on to its perch. 
A few days after this I found another in a wagtail’s nest in ivy, 
on a wall not more than twelve yards from the first and directly 
opposite to it. Both nests were not more than twelve feet from 
the ground, and were rather exposed. The cuckoo could easily 
have got into the nest to lay the eggs. This second bird I put 
into a cage, and I hung it where I took the nest from, thinking the 
wagtails would feed it, which they did about every five minutes 
for quite a week; but as the bird was growing I found the cage 
too small, and I put it into a larger one. The wagtails came to 
the new cage as often as before, for two days, when they ceased 
coming. I looked into the cage and found the cuckoo dead, and 
I found at the bottom of the cage small grasshoppers, moths, and 
small beetles. The wagtails could have fed it more easily in the 
new cage, for the wires were farther apart, so the cuckoo must 
have known it was a new cage, and refused to take its food. Why 
I think so is, I remember that Mr. Wise, who kept a cuckoo for 
three years,* told me when I remarked that the cage he had it in 
was too smaU, that he had put it several times into a larger one, but 
directly he did so the bird refused its food, and when he put it 
back into its old cage it began to eat ravenously. 
About a week after this second bird died I found another in the 
kitchen garden, in a hole in a wall in a wagtail’s nest, but the 
cuckoo could only have got into this nest with difficulty to have 
deposited its egg, for the hole was rather small and the nest was 
three or four inches below the entrance in the wall. This bird 
was put into a cage and hung near to where the nest was taken. 
The wagtails fed it for quite a fortnight, and during that time the 
bird seemed to flourish, but two or three days afterwards I dis¬ 
covered only one small bird feeding it, which was the male bird, 
* For the “Biography” of this cuckoo, by the late Mr. J. E. Littlehoy, see 
‘ Trans. Herts Nat. Hist. Soc.,’ Vol, IV, p. 223 .— Ed. 
