“Sumer is icumen in,
Loude sing Cuckoo.”
The Cuckoo is a strange, mysterious bird whose history is not yet fully known in spite of all the careful attention it has received at the hands of naturalists for generations.
It arrives in this country during April, and departs again in July, leaving its uncared-for young ones to follow, in August and September, to the winter quarters of the species in Africa’s sunny clime.
FOSTER MOTHER TREE PIPIT STRETCHING HERSELF AFTER HAVING FED YOUNG CUCKOO.
The bird makes no attempt whatever at nest-building, but deposits its eggs singly, as a rule in those of small birds, and allows the little dupes to hatch out and rear its young. From its similarity in appearance to a small hawk the ancients believed that in the winter it changed into one. They were also firmly convinced that young Cuckoos not only swallowed all the other chicks in the nests in which they were hatched out themselves, but, as a mark of ingratitude, finally devoured their foster-parents. Although this was, of course, quite wrong, the real facts of the bird’s life and career are quite as romantic, as we shall see presently.
Up to quite recently, people supposed that the female Cuckoo, when about to lay, watched the nest of some small bird until the owner left it in search of food, when she stealthily sat down and dropped one of her own eggs into the structure. Unfortunately for this theory, it would not hold good in the case of domed nests built by such species as the Common Wren and Willow Warbler, both of which are occasionally victimised. This puzzle has been satisfactorily solved by the discovery of the real facts. The Cuckoo lays her eggs upon the ground, and, picking them up in her bill, deposits them in the homes of birds whose own productions they will to some extent match in colours.
YOUNG CUCKOO IN MEADOW
PIPIT’S NEST, BIRD’S OWN EGGS
THROWN OUT ON TO EDGE
OF STRUCTURE.