An Immoral Cuckoo
The unpleasant character of the cuckoo is, I fear, further blackened by a modern instance of its selfish behaviour. Last year a pair of water wagtails, whose nest was built in the ivy on a stone gatepost, were victimised. Duly, and with labour, they brought up a greedy young cuckoo. This year they built within a foot of last year's site and, having built, laid four eggs. A cuckoo, or probably the cuckoo again, found the nest but instead of laying an egg with the others she picked up each wagtail's egg, flew with it to the boughs of an apple tree some fifteen yards away and successfully swallowed them. The young gardener who watched this immoral meal described the cuckoo as swallowing the eggs in the manner of a pill. No sign of any shell was seen beneath the tree where the eggs were swallowed. It is, of course, a common habit of the cuckoo to remove one egg from the clutch among which she deposits her own ; but evidence of her treatment of the removed egg is rather thin. It is a plausible conjecture that her unusual greed in this instance has been produced by this dry and droughty season, as rooks, usually harmless, are stimulated to the crime of egg-stealing by any exceptional dryness. One of them was seen during a drought hammering away at an artificial nest-egg, put by the keeper in a pheasant's nest. * * * *
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