Habits of the Cuckoo.

Otago Witness, Issue 2059, 10 August 1893, Page 48

Habits of the Cuckoo.

As I have never read or heard of the same cuckoo returning to deposit an egg in the nest of the same pair of birds she duped in tbo previous year, I venture to ask whether any of your correspondents know of a similar case. One day in May 1892, about 12 miles from London, I was at the bottom of my garden, in which there is a path bounded on both Bides by a privet hedge. From this hedge, about 2 p.m., a cuckoo dashed out, and on examining the spot I found a hedgesparrow's nest, in which there were five eggs of that bird and one of the cuckoo, the latter apparently just deposited. In due time all the eggs were hatched, and within two days the young hedgesparrows were on the ground below the nest, while the young cuckoo was still comfortable aloft. I have frequently heard and read that the young cuckoo pushes the young of its foster parents out of the test; but in this case, an the young cnckco was only two days old, I consider such a feat would have been physically impossible ; and it appears to me, after careful examination of the dead sparrows, in which there was net a particle of food, that the young cuckoo had managed to get the food, and that the young sparrows, dying of starvation, were removed from the nest by the parent birds, without any interference on the part of tho yonrsg cuckoo. I may add that, although I watched the nest carefully, I saw no attempt on the part of the latter to dislodge its foster brethren, and abont a fortnight later, during a terrific thunderstorm, it was drowned in the nest. During the present spring I have kept careful watch for the cuckoo, but it was not until May 4 that I observed it in a strall' plane tree close to the spot where the hedgesparrows had built last year. On examining the hedge I found another nest of the hedge- ' sparrow within a few inches of the nest of last year. It was of very recent construction and empty, but on the following morning, May 5, there was a cuckoo'sjegg in it, and the next day a hedgesparrow's. Since then I have not touched the nosfc, but intend

to watch carefully in order to ascertain whether tbe young cuckoo really does push the young hedgesparrows out, or whether my theory is correct. Meantime, I would ask whether any of your correspondents know of a pair of hedgesparrows building twice in the same spot, and a cuckoo coming a second year to deposit her egg in their ne#.— Evbebtt Millais, 31 Grosvenor road, S.W. —[That the young cuckoo, notwithstanding the apparent "physical impossibility," is able to eject its foster brethren from the nest, has been placed beyond doubt by actual observation. The accounts given by Dr Jenner (in a letter to John Hunter, and by him communicated to the Royal Society), and by Montagu, Blackwall, Mrs Blackburn, of Glasgow, and the late John Hancock, of Newcastle, make it clear that the young cuckoo can and does perform the extraordinary feat attributed to it. See the fourth edition of larrell's "British Birds," Vol. 11,; pp. 396-397; Harting's " Summer Migrants (p. 239), where Mrs Blackburn's sketch from nature is reproduced, and Hancock, " Zoologist," 1880, pp. 203-207.— Ed ]— Field.