hand to obtain sufficient food for its adopted child. One instance is
mentioned in the 'Zoologist,' page 1637, by Mr. J. W. Slater, of
Manchester, as having been witnessed by Mr. Beech, of Droylsden,
in which the young birds of a Meadow Pipit having been found on
the ground outside the nest in which was a young Cuckoo, and
having been replaced to see what would happen, the parent birds,
on their return 'immediately threw out their own offspring, to make
room for the parasite.* They do the same with their own eggs if
replaced.
As before hinted, the adult Cuckoo occasionally herself destroys,
by throwing out, one or more of the eggs of the bird into whose
nest she surreptitiously introduces her own. Bat how does she introduce
them.' Here again is another singularity] It is perfectly certain
that in some instances she conveys them in her bill into the other
birds' nests—it has been already mentioned that one was shot with
her egg actually in her bill—Spurzheim says he has seen one carrying
if in her feet. Mr. Williamson, the curator of the Scarborough
Museum, found the egg of one in a nest which was placed so close
under a hedge, that the Cuckoo could not possibly have gof into it;
and T. Wolley, Esq., records another similar instance, communicated to
him by Mr. Bartlett, of Tattle Russell Street, London, in which he
found one in the nest of a Robin, which was placed in so small a
hole that the same mode must have been resorted to. So again. Dr.
JenttCT has related an instance in which the egg was placed in the
nest of a Wagtail, built under the eaves of a cottage. Here it is
plain who has been the 4 eaves dropper.' The like 'proceeding
must have been adopted in all cases where the Wren's nest, which
is a covered one, has been made use of; and in fact, excepting in
such as that of the Lark, which is built on the open ground, most
of the nests in which the Cuckoo lays arc built in such thick and
tangled parts of hedges, that it is next to impossible for so large a
bird as the Cuckoo to approach them bodily. R. A. Julian, Esq.,
Junior, records in 'The Naturalist,* page 162, that F. Barlow, Esq.,
of Cambridge, found a Cuckoo's egg in a Redstart's nest, in a hole
in an old willow tree, which he had great difficulty in getting out,
the aperture being only about an inch wide. The Cuckoo has been
seen removing the egg of a small bird from a nest, in which die
had just placed her own changeling, by the same mode by which
in cases where she could otherwise, if not in all, she introduces her
own, namel) in her bill. Cuckoos do not pair, hut are polygamous, the
reason of which has been suggested to he that parental care is not
required for the young. They are bold and fierce birds, and rufHe up
oroivoo. 5S
their feathers in displeasure at an early age. They are also rather shy
in their habits. So too, 'in case more than one pair of these birds
arc frightened, or startled on the wing, they show their unsociability
very much by not flying away together, like most other birds, but each
pair separates from the rest, and takes its own course, although the
female is never far behind the male, who is careful not to desert her.'
The flight of the Cuckoo is steady and straight forward. At times
he may be seen perched upon a rail, branch, or eminence, swinging
himself round with out-spread tail, and uttering his note the while in
an odd and observable manner. On the ground they are but awkward,
and out of (heir element, and at sea, so to speak. They sometimes
perch lengthwise on a bough, after the manner of the Night-Hawk,
The food of these birds, generally procured in bushes or trees, but
sometimes on the ground, consists of insects, spiders, and caterpillars,
as also, I believe, minute shells; and White of Selborne says seeds,
but they mav have been accidentally swallowed with the insects. There
seems some slight reason for supposing that the Cuckoo will eat the
eggs of other birds, possibly those which she takes nut to make room
for her own; and one instance is mentioned by Bishop Stanley, in his
'Familiar History of British Birds,' in which a flock of Cuckoos,
observed in the county of Down, devoured, or at least pulled in pieces
the greater part of a late brood of young Blackbirds in the nest. The
Cuckoo's food being insects, it is guided, one should say by instinct,
but that its instinct is, as will appear, by no means unerring in this
respect, to lay its egg generally in the nest of an insectivorous bird,
for the most part in that of a Robin or a Dunnock. It does not,
however, invariably do so, the egg having been found, as hereafter
mentioned, in the nest of a Greenfinch, a Linnet, and a Chaffinch.
It is, nevertheless on the other hand, very remarkable that such birds
as these latter will very often, though not always, in such case, feed
the young Cuckoo with insects; their own most natural food being
grain, or rather seeds, and with which latter, when prepared in their
craw, they feed their own young, as well as with the former. Even
a Canary, in whose cage a young Cuckoo was lodged, fed it with
caterpillars placed there for the purpose, instead of with the seed on
which she herself was always accustomed to feed. At times, however,
birds of the Finch tribe, at whose door these unwelcome foundlings
have been dropped, supply them with young wheat, vetches, tender
blades of grass, and seeds of different kinds.
The small bird has been known even to follow its foster-child into
a cage, and to feed it there, as well as in other instances to attend
upon it outside the cage. \\ illiam Reynolds, Esq., of Walton, near