226 NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
ing (at 8 a.m.) on my lawn, viz., two well-grown young Cuckoos, fully fledged and
strong upon the wing, and as large as Sparrow-hawks, being fed by a brisk, dapper,
intensely energetic, and tiny mite of a Water-wagtail, who hopped about the lawn
after worms and flies, and brought the food and put it down the throats of these
Cuckoo babies, who were almost large enough to have swallowed whole the brisk
little Wagtail that had, no doubt, hatched the eggs, which must have been nearly
as big as itself.
" I watched the curious and comic proceeding for quite half an hour, the
mite of a Wagtail hard at work all the time searching after the food for these
precious big babies. On my stepping out on to the lawn the family dispersed,
the two big baby Cuckoos flying away to a lofty tree, and the tiny Wagtail of
a foster mother, we may be sure, not far off."
The above communication gave rise to considerable correspondence. "L. T.,"
writing from Kew Gardens, says : "The pretty sight so pleasantly described by
the rector of Great Parndon is quite familiar to me. I remember, as a child, watch-
ing a little Water-wagtail busy feeding its great hungry baby on my grandmother's
lawn in Somersetshire ; and not long since I saw at Cavenham, Suffolk, two young
Cuckoos on the lawn, close up to the house, attended by anxious Water-wagtails,
who seemed very proud of their fine, noisy children, and were busy from morning
till night endeavouring to satisfy their insatiable appetites."
But in refutation of some of the statements of the "Rector," Mr. Arthur
Stradling, C.M.Z.S., sent the following interesting letter on the habits of the
Cuckoo: "Will it be deemed very ungracious if I venture to point out
one or two inaccuracies of natural history in the prefatory note to the most
diverting account of the Cuckoo babies and their wee foster-parent as detailed by
the Rector of Great Parndon ? He alleges that 'it (the Cuckoo) burglariously
enters the nest of another bird . . . ejects the eggs it finds there from their
rightful home, and coolly lays its own eggs in their place.'
" As a matter of fact, the common Cuckoo lays its egg on the ground
(where it often betrays a tendency to some original habit of complete nidifica-
tion by a rude attempt at forming a depression or enclosure) ; the single egg is
then carried to some neighbouring nest and deposited therein. And here is dis-
played a marvellous discrimination, intellectual or instinctive, on the part of the
bird in selecting a 'clutch' which will most nearly resemble her own very variable
produce. This is admirably illustrated in the oological collection of the Depart-
ment of British Zoology at the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road, where
Cuckoos' eggs, taken from all manner of nests, are exhibited, together with the
contents proper. And it is the young bird which ejects its fellow-fledglings, the
legitimate occupants of the thus ravished home ; its superior size and strength
and peculiarly-shaped back enabling it to effect the eviction with comparative
ease, and in all cases with certainty.
" This 'odious instinct,' as it is termed by Darwin (who draws a graphic picture
of the whole process, with all that is collateral to it, in the eighth chapter of 'The
Origin of Species'), is manifested directly the young usurper is free from the shell,
even before it can see ; and when the true progeny of the nest have been replaced
therein by observers, the act has been repeated again and again. Indeed, it must
be done early, if at all, in order that the little Cuckoo—a veritable glutton—may
get the whole food supply, and may exert its power before its victims develop
bulk or muscle for resistance. So much sustenance does the growing Cuckoo
require that one egg only, as a rule, is placed in a nest—a rule to which the
interesting case given in 'The Standard' evidently offers an exception."