“Just want of room,” replied the parent bird. “I can assure you there is no vice in him. When a young cuckoo wakes to life in a small nest, his first instinct is to make room for himself. I’m rather surprised to think that my son did not throw the eggs out right away. That is what I did when I was born in this wood. I wriggled and wriggled until I had them one after the other on the flat of my back, and then hoisted them over the side. There can’t be any blame for me in the matter, because the instinct came to me as naturally as my hunger. A cuckoo’s egg only takes a fortnight in the hatching, so the cuckoo baby is generally in time to throw other eggs out of the nest. When two cuckoos have got into the same nest by mistake, the two baby birds fight, and the weaker one goes out with the other eggs or the small birds. If two cuckoo eggs get placed in one nest, the cuckoo that is born first is the lucky one. Even a blackbird’s nest can’t hold two cuckoos. Perhaps it is our quarrelsome nature when young that made some mother cuckoos lay eggs in alien nests.”
The Vixen wondered whether these incidents had anything to do with the mobbing of the cuckoo by the small birds when he went abroad. They seemed more reasonable as an explanation than the sparrow-hawk theory.
The baby cuckoo was soon fledged, and left nest and wood at the same time, leaving his father in sole possession. As the summer wore away, the call changed considerably and ceased to have the fresh ring about it. There was no loss of health to the bird associated with the failing voice. On the contrary, he was in splendid condition, and ate heartily of all the good things the wood provided—moths, caterpillars, beetles and even butterflies. The indigestible parts of these dainties he ejected in pellets, just as though he had been an owl. With the end of July his notes had quite gone; other cuckoos were coming into the district in great numbers, and were allowed to enter the wood unchallenged.
“They are from the north of England and from Scotland,” he explained. “They leave early so as to be down here in good time, for we shall all go south together. Some have come all the way from the mountains of Sutherlandshire.”
“But the young ones can’t face the journey yet,” said the Vixen. “Many of them are not yet six weeks old. My cubs take longer to learn to help themselves.”
A TWO DAYS OLD CUCKOO
Ejecting a young Titlark and Eggs from its nest.
[Photo by T. A. Metcalfe
“That’s all right,” explained the Cuckoo; “the birds, you see, are all old ones; in fact, all the mother birds are three years old at least. The season’s children wait in England some weeks longer than we do, and travel together. Their mothers have told them all about the road, and we all have an instinct that keeps us from taking a wrong direction.”
“Why don’t they accompany you?” inquired the Vixen.
“It is hard to say why we have our call in August unless it is to get home before moulting time,” replied the Cuckoo, “but as far as the youngsters are concerned, I should say that they could not stand the heat of our winter home in August. We get there before September, and they are seldom with us before October, and then the country is more fit for young birds that have known no warmth worth mentioning. Coming south gradually in September, they can enjoy what awaits them at the journey’s end.”