AN HONEST CUCKOO. [To ram EDrros. or THE "Srsor.irroLl Sra,—The
following instance of unusual conduct on the part of this bird may, I think, interest your readers. I copy it from the Bristol Times and Mirror of yesterday :—
" Westerman's Moaats Hefts contains an account by Pro- fessor Adolf Muller of a cuckoo who, abandoning the dishonest practice of her species, hatched and reared her young. On May 16th, 1888, Herr Muller was crossing a wood, when a cuckoo started almost from under his feet. He examined the ground carefully, and discovered beneath a tussock of grass, in a little hollow, three eggs. The first was light-yellow with brown spots ; the second, orange with greenish lines ; the third, smaller than the others, was of a greenish-gray with minute red spots and blotches of reddish-brown. The Professor, with true German patience, came every day, and, by the aid of an opera-glass, observed, without disturbing her, the habits of the extraordinary bird which chance had revealed to him. She proceeded to sit with irreproachable regularity. In ten days a young one was hatched. The mother abandoned the two sterile eggs, and devoted herself to the little cuckoo, whom she sheltered under her wings in the keen morning air, and supplied with caterpillars from a neigh- bouring oak-copse. In three weeks it could fly, whereas under the care of foster-parents young cuckoos do not master that accom- plishment until after the lapse of six or seven weeks. A note- -worthy fact in the discovery is that the cuckoo can lay eggs of different sizes and colours."
This is certainly a very unusual occurrence, and one which it would be interesting to have verified. Perhaps some of your readers may have heard of it before, or you, Sir, may know of the paper Moaats Hefte, and whether the account is likely to be worthy of credence P—I am, Sir, Sze.,
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