AN HONEST CUCKOO.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOD."]
SIR,—In the Spectator of August 13th, a correspondent drew your attention to an account, given in Westerman's Monats Hefte by Professor Adolf Muller, of "an honest cuckoo," who hatched and reared her young. It may interest some of your readers to know that Professor Muller reported a similar case in a most interesting article on the cuckoo's egg, published in 1873 in the Gartenlaabe (No. 25, p. 407); the main difference being that in this case Professor Muller was not an eye- witness, but relies on the authority of Herr Kiessel, of St. Johann on the Saar, an equally well-known bird-lover.
According to this account, it is proved conclusively by Kiessel and three other eye-witnesses, that towards the end of May, 1868, a cuckoo reared her young in a wood near St. Johann. The bird was discovered by the woodmen sitting on two eggs which lay simply on the ground amid the heath, without any traces of a nest. Kiessel himself observed the bird regularly, and saw that both the eggs were hatched, and the little birds reared with perfect tenderness and care.
These facts, as Muller points out, emphasise the kinship which exists between our cuckoo and its American cousins, the black-billed or red-eyed cuckoo, and the yellow-billed or rain cuckoo. The latter has, I believe, been seen in England
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