WINTER CUCKOOS.
YEAR after year as the spring weather comes round letters and paragraphs appear in the papers chronicling the arrival of the cuckoo in March or even in February. Year after year, in the same way, people who have examined the evidence on previous occasions, and who have studied the known facts of natural history, dismiss these announcements of the cuckoo's premature arrival with incredulity. Their reasons for doing so are simple enough ; a cuckoo's note is very easily imitated, and when inquiry has been made on the spot where early cuckoos are said to have been heard, it has often been found that someone has been imitating the bird's call. When, again, people say that they have "actually seen" a cuckoo, inquiry probably elicits the fact that these confident witnesses cannot tell a cuckoo from a sparrowhawk. As a general rule, then, such announcements may be dismissed offhand. This year, however, has been exceptional in many respects, and in particular the announcements of the early cuckoo have been different from their predecessors. The January weather was exceptionally mild, after a warm and wet December ; crocuses were in flower soon after the New Year, and daffodils before February ; the quick-set in the hedges was green as in April, and altogether the spring seemed to be here months before its time. What wonder, then, that the spring birds should come with the spring flowers P So, then, the spring birds did arrive—in the news- papers. The watchers for the cuckoo were especially restless, and, two months in advance of the usual announcement, we were informed that the bird was actually here in January. Probably the sceptics took no more notice of these first announcements than in other years. But the situation became different when, early in February, a letter appeared in the papers from Mr. R. Lydekker, the famous naturalist, chronicling the fact that he himself, while working in his garden at Harpenden, had heard the cuckoo call two or three times, and further emphatically stating that these "full notes" were "unquestionably uttered by a cuckoo, and not by a mimicking boy." When the writer of a score of standard works on natural history, whose name is familiar to the learned societies of Europe, writes to the papers making so definite a statement as this, giving the date and the hour of the day at which the remarkable event occurred, what need is there of other wit- nesses ? The sceptics could merely shake their heads and receive with what humility they might the reproaches of believers. However, they had not long to wait. Within a week Mr. Lydekker wrote again to the papers stating that he found to his regret that he had been completely deceived in the matter of his supposed cuckoo. "The notes beard by me on that day," he writes, " and by several of my neighbours on the same and the next four or five days, were uttered by a bricklayer's labourer at work on a new house, who tells me that he is an expert at imitating the bird, which he does without the aid of any instrument." The best comment on this second letter seems to be that of the kindly critic who has observed that Mr. Lydekker may console himself with the reflection that he has rendered a service to science by proving that a distinguished naturalist may be imposed upon as certainly as the perhaps equally observant but less sceptical sportsman or rustic.
Is the February cuckoo, then, finally disposed of ? By no means. The believers still believe. A writer in the Daily Mail who, under the initials " W. B. T.," veils the personality of a well-known and trusted naturalist, is not convinced that the cuckoo-chroniclers are mistaken. He has beard of a January cuckoo, which has been seen and watched by neigh- bours, one of them a noted man of science, and another "who has been an observer of birds all his life." He returns to the attack in the Daily Mail of February 21st. The Duchess of Bedford, in the course of making inquiries—one of them being whether the alleged cuckoos had been heard calling with their full note, contrary to the cuckoo's custom on his first arrival—had discovered that this January cuckoo had not been " heard," as was at first reported, but merely seen. " W. B. T." admits this mistake, but pleads that the evidence for the bird's presence is much stronger than it has been made to appear. It is impossible not to admire this chivalrous support of a friend and a neighbour, but it is to say the least of it unfortunate that the friend who chronicles the arrival of the bird should hail from Harpenden, where Mr. Lydekker, in his garden on February 4th at 3.40 p.m., heard the bricklayer's assistant. Probably the fact is, as " W. B. T." suggests may be possible, that the bird which these Harpenden wit- nesses saw was a hawk. Perhaps the present writer may relate a personal experience as bearing on this point. Some years ago a parcel arrived by post which, on being opened, was very quickly shut up again. It was hot August weather, and the contents had travelled badly. The parcel was removed to the garden. A covering letter conveyed a request from a gamekeeper that a bird forwarded by the same post might be examined; he wished to know what kind of a hawk it was. The friend who forwarded the bird and the game- keeper's letter observed in a note appended to the letter that there did not seem to be anything very exceptional about the hawk, except that its feet were smaller than usual. The parcel in the garden was duly opened, and was found to contain a young cuckoo. The plumage of a young cuckoo, of course, is different from that of an adult bird, and in particular the barred breast much resembles the breast of a sparrowhawk. But the point to notice is that here we have an instance of a cuckoo which was actually handled by a gamekeeper and another person living in the country, yet which neither of them could tell from a hawk. The cuckoo's feeble feet and small beak, you would suppose, would prevent him from being guessed to be a hawk, but a hawk this cuckoo was supposed to be. Is it not the more probable, then, that a bird which has been only " seen and watched" in January or February is a hawk, and not a cuckoo ? It is difficult, doubtless, to suppose that an experienced observer could mistake the flight of a hawk for the peculiar shimmering motion of a cuckoo's wings ; but we are not told that the bird was seen flying, it was merely " watched." Was it seen to be feeding? For the food difficulty, in the case of these early cuckoos, offers the most insuperable problem of all. Upon what do these February cuckoos live ? In April, May, and June they live on insects, beetles, and caterpillars ; but where are the caterpillars in February ? The answer perhaps made by the believers in their existence is that these February cuckoos arrive here and die for want of food—an odd instance of mistaken instinct, if it is so. The supposed death of the early birds only adds the greater weight to the contention made by the sceptics, that the best proof of the arrival of a cuckoo in February would be the production of its dead body. It is true, as " W. B. T." urges, that" the best observers are usually found among those who would rather fail to prove their point than reduce a living thing to a specimen." Bat if, the sceptic may retort, the bird arriving prematurely is only going to die of starvation, where is the cruelty in shooting it ? We may hold strongly that the most hateful welcome to give to any bird is to "preserve" it by shooting it; but the fact remains that, in any case, no early cuckoo has ever been shot. There was a bird which is said to have been seen and heard in the winter of 1835, and this bird is referred to by one of the chroniclers of this year's cuckoos in the Daily Mail of February 21st. This bird was shot at, but unfortunately it was missed.
It is not open to anyone, of course, however observant of birds' habits, and however sceptical as to thee() reported untimely arrivals, to assert that for a cuckoo to come to England in February is an impossibility. All that he may reasonably say is that there is no satisfactory evidence that a cuckoo has ever done so. The main, broad facts of bird migration, so far as we know and understand them, are all against such a possibility. For countless ages birds have migrated north to our shores for the breeding season, and south again away from our shores for the winter. They fulfil every year the same cycle of life; the wheel comes full circle punctually season after season; it is as if the mechanism of the birds' life were wound up like the machinery of a clock, certain to do the same thing at the same time day after day and year after year. It might almost be contended that the life of a migrant bird could be measured in heart-beats, as some hold that the intervals between the actions of persons who are hypnotised can be measured, and that only when the heart has beaten a certain number of times does the bird move south or north in autumn or spring. However that may
be, nothing is more marked than the punctuality of the cuckoo to the time and place at which be is heard in these islands year after year. The old country saying of " Hefful cuckoo fair," that at the fair on April 12th at Heathfield in Sussex the old woman lets the cuckoo out of the basket, owes its origin to the punctual appearance of the bird in Sussex on that date—the very date on which the writer has a note of the bird heard in his garden on the Sussex border last year. For the writer the opening of the present year will be marked not merely by the acute controversy which has arisen over the reports of Mr. Lydekker's cuckoo and others, but by another note, equally unexpected, made upon the consequences which follow on the cuckoo's arrival in any year. An old country- woman the other day was talking to a visitor about her health ; she is nearly eighty, and feels the cold. "The doctor tells me I ought to go out," she said. " He says a walk and some fresh air would do me good. But I knows better. I never goes out until I bear the cuckoo calling; then I knows it's fit for me." She knows what the cuckoo knows, and she will go out on the twelfth of April.
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