“Why don’t you keep your singing for the daytime,” said one of the fox cubs, the biggest in the litter, “instead of waking me up before sunrise?”
“Well,” he replied, “you must not grumble at that. Other birds sleep soundly because they have been busy all day building their nests or helping to hatch the eggs or feed the little ones. Naturally enough, then, the evening finds them tired out, and they sleep until the sun wakes them. But cuckoos are the wisest birds in all the world. They want to enjoy the spring and summer without the hard labour that others practise. So I have no nest to build, no wife to keep, no young to tend, and I know the Heron Wood in all its beauty as no other bird can hope to. A very few hours give me all the sleep I require, and when I wake and see the summer decorating the beautiful wood, I must tell how grateful I am. It is by my help that the wood returns thanks for the gift of summer at all hours of the day and night, for when the late woodlark ceases his song I resume mine.”
“That explanation may satisfy you,” the Vixen interrupted, “but I am not sure that it convinces me. For you seem to shirk your duties, and you can have no share in the joy of the birds that work; you are not a father.”
“You don’t know much about it,” cried the Cuckoo merrily. “Follow me now, if you please.”
So the Vixen, leaving her cubs to gambol about the little patch of green-sward, followed, and he went lightly through the wood until he came to a bush where two accentors, known to the village lads as hedge-sparrows, had a nest.
“Show yourself,” he whispered, and when she did so the sitting bird flew away hurriedly, leaving six pale-blue eggs exposed to view.
“Look carefully,” said the cuckoo with a chuckle, and the Vixen saw that one egg was rather larger than the rest, and had some tiny black specks that might have been overlooked at first sight.
“Come away,” whispered the Cuckoo. “I don’t like to be seen about here. But I’ll tell you in confidence that I’m the father of the big blue egg.”
They moved off quietly to the more secluded corner of the wood where the cubs had found some rabbits to play with.
“If boys saw the nest they might not recognise that as a cuckoo’s egg at all. Some eggs have red or brown blotches on a grey-white ground; they were not like this one, and you would not see them in a hedge-sparrow’s nest. They would be in a blackbird’s home by the side of the ten-acre meadow, or a warbler’s on the marsh, or in a wagtail’s nest.”