After a good deal of exertion, which only shuffled it about on the stump, he flew off for a minute’s rest and reflection. Then he tackled it again, leaning down and pushing his beak sideways under the edge, pecking valiantly, and every now and then mounting the nut to peer through the hole to make sure that what he wanted was still there.
The stump on which the shell was placed had a sloping surface, and to prevent the squirrels’ food from rolling off, a ledge had been put on two sides and across the bottom. Presently I was amazed to see that the small bird had succeeded in wriggling and shuffling the cocoanut till he had tilted it up upon this ledge. Out rolled the monkey nut from beneath, and he flew away with it in triumph. I then heard a vigorous knocking going on, a little way off, and saw him in a shrub banging the nut against the trunk to break the pod. Having made an opening, he held it firmly on a branch with one little claw, and feasted royally. This exploit, from the time he first tackled the cocoanut till he got the monkey nut out, took him just a quarter of an hour.
It was during this summer of 1914 that I saw, for the first time in my life, a young cuckoo in a nest.
Parting the furze bushes one day I came upon a linnet’s nest, moss-built and tiny. There seemed to be a weird sort of an eye looking over the top of it, and I touched the rim. To my amazement half a foot of ruffled black and white shot up like a Jack-in-the-box, and an orange-coloured maw and throat opened wide and hissed angrily. It was quite formidable, and looked enormous compared with its wee foster-parents, but I have no doubt they were immensely proud of it. We had a tennis tournament that day, and I think about fifty young people must have visited the furze bush. The excitement could not have been very good for the poor creature. For the next two days he remained dull and sleepy, and entirely declined to shoot himself up, or even to open his lovely orange mouth. The third day found him flown. The little mossy cup was empty-and time too, I should say; with such a swelling bulk, I wonder the walls had not burst.
I think we may disabuse our minds of the traditional belief in the wickedness of the cuckoo mère, and of the supposed grief and distress of the youngster’s foster-parents. It seems to me much more likely that, instead of considering it a misfortune to find a cuckoo’s egg in their nests, our British birds only hope for such luck, and swell with pride as they rear a magnificent chick, under the delusion that it is their own.
