A November Cuckoo
Controversialists have made the alleged ." March Cuck'o,,. notorious, but we have heard nothing in the .past, of that much less likely bird the November Cuckoo. So the bird
that has reached the Kensington Museum (via the Field) will make history. Its tate, :suggests an inference that is important to the student of birds. The youngster died in Scotland in November of ill-nutrition, though it seems to have eaten many worms. This means that whatever other causes co-operate, the most insistent reason for migration . is diminution of the 'right food suPply. Swifts migrate earlier and come later than most birds because they must feed in the air and prefer its higher strata. The cuckoo appears to need a particular sort of caterpillar. One of the leaSt explicable powers of birds is their instant knowledge of where food is to be found, Up in the Arctic Circle birds arrive in immense hordes, pat to the emergence of the mosquitoes from the melting snow. Though the phrase itself explains nothing, something similar to the " inherited memory " of the cricket drives the hungry birds at . the. due date to the right source. "The Voice of the stomach " was always Understood even by the least intelligent and birds: are Very intelligent. The instinct, one would think, is likely to have more failures in the cuckoo than other birds, because the young do not migrate with their parents or even at the same date.
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