CUCKOO'S EGGS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Sia,—May I be permitted to add to your answer to the inquiry in your last number about the power of the cuckoo to alter the coloration of its eggs? The cuckoo does many wonderful things from its birth to its death, but it has no power to colour its eggs according to its own wish, and once the egg is laid the colour is fixed. The average tone is that of something between the skylark and the wagtail, but it also lays eggs as blue as a hedge- sparrow, red as a robin, and even quite white. The cuckoo lays from five to eight eggs at intervals of about four days. My theory is that the cuckoo resembles the guillemot, which lays different coloured eggs, and that one cuckoo always lays the same coloured egg, be it blue, brown, white, or red, or any variety. It has laid its egg in the nests of some forty birds which breed in England, and has no fixed rule—i.e., the blue egg is found in many nests where the egg of the foster-parent is very different. A young cuckoo is by nature entirely selfish, for in a few hours after birth it begins to eject (aided by a cavity in its back, which fills up in about ten days) the offspring of its foster-mother from the nest, and should there be another cuckoo in the nest, the weaker is heaved over the side. It is a great pity that Miss Hilda Terras, in her charming book to which you refer, did not give us photographs of the acts of ejection. We have a lot of cuckoos round here. I have seen them searching the ivy-coloured walls for nests for several minutes within thirty yards of a tennis court in play, and on June 7th, 1917, I heard a cuckoo between 7.55 and 8.15 p.m. (G.m.t.), call 220, then 107, and again 14 times. Thp bird was close to me, and flew several times to another tree and returned, calling many times whilst on the wing.—I am, Sir, &c.,
P.S.—I have a neighbour who shoots cuckoos because "they are such immoral birds." He might as well Shoot sparrows. The only two English birds I know which marry for life are the raven and the peregrine.
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