Rival Cuckoos In the same garden a cuckoo was born
in a blackbird's nest. The choice of such a foster parent is rare, but by no means unknown. Here, as always, the parent birds evinced no distress whatever when their own young were thrown out of the nest by the agency of the sensitive back of the intruding cuckoo. They fed it—or at least the hen bird fed it— with more gusto than if the progeny had been their own. On this theme I have just had an account of the discovery of two cuckoo's eggs in one nest. In this affair one of the young cuckoos ejected both the rival cuckoo and the young of the foster parents. The multitude of cuckoos perhaps accounts for the slight divergence of the birds from their common habits. Though the excess of males in this race (who start all on that tiresome E flat at all hours of the day and many of the night) may give an exaggerated idea, the number of young cuckoos must be immense. We may safely attribute a dozen eggs to each hen bird, and she is capable to laying over a score.
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