The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-07-25

the immediate north of London are like
 wise firm believers in the quaint fiction. You will never see.'' observed an old
 bird lover with exasperating positive
 ness, "a hawk about while the cuckoo
 calls" To tell the old fellow that a
 pair of sparrow-hawks. with their ra- yenous brook, had been captured in
 June, in a nest occupied the previous
 year by a pair of gray crows, would
 only be to court a pitying smile. And
 the fiction that the cuckoo eats other birds eggs to make his voice clear" is equally tenacious. Game-keepers es- peeially regard the cuckoo as terrible depredator in the way of eggs, with a special and unrighteous preference for
 the eggs of pheasa1lts and grouse.
 There is not the slightest evidence for
 this belief, and though various obser- Vers have declared that the cuckoo will | devour the eggs in the nests they select for their own eggs. the evidence is very slender. M. Oustalet examined the stomachs of a number of cuckoos, and only discovered the contents to be lar vac, and other insects injurious to
 gardeners. The food of the cuckoo con- | sists of spiders and caterpillars chiefly White of Selborne says seeds, tool, and though it is often said that it occa- sionally feeds on the eggs it takes out of neststto make room for it's own, there l is only one recorded instance of the pee
 acdillo, that recorded by Bishop Stan ley, where brood of blackbirds were destroyed. Such evidence ms too thin to hang'a dog upon. Its reputation of
 being a hawk is alone the reason for the charge; but a gamekeeper is not an individual easily to be convinced. The
 points of resemblance are too many for his credulity. For lack of other argu- ment he will adduce the additional fact that cuckoos eject the indigestibIe part of the food they consume in pellets, just like a hawk. But then this is a habit
 not at all uncommon. Blackbirds and
 thrushes feeding on the haws throw up the stones afterwards, and owls also eject pellets of indigestible matter, though of course the owl is a bird Of prey. ..s
 The cuckoo is commonly thought to be the stupidest bird alive, and in
 Scatland abolish person is Q ''gowk,' 2 the same as in the west of Englond he Is a 'gawk," and in Sweden a "gock. :" Somewhat irreyerently, do we not term the more than confiding friend a
 cuckoo?" But it does not seem that the cuckoo is really such an awful fool;, it certainly avoids, with considerable cunning, the material cares of bringing
 up a family, and moreover, so mesmer-
 izes other birds that they cannot dis tinguish their wee young from the bur
 ly interloper, or, if they do distinguish,
 awes them into willing slaves The
 most striking instance of this occult
 power of the cuckoo is where canary, given young cuckoo, fed it assiduIous-
 ly on eaterpillars put into the cage for
 the purpose instead of on the seed
 which it used itself. This is the most
 surprising instance of the mesmeric power of the cuckoo, but only so in de-
 gree, other birds acting as foster par
 ents to the voracious fledgling showing
 remarkable and inexplainable devotion.
 A case is recorded of gray wagtail
 itself to a shadow in the herculean eff
 fort to feed two young cuckoos in two
 separate nests. Birds show more than
 ordinary devotion in nurturlng the
 young cuckoo unceremoniously quar- tered on them, even to throwing their own young out of the nest better to de-
 vote themselves to the stranger. Dr.
 Jenner's account of the way the young
 cuckoo expels the more legitimate
 young occupants from the nest-by shouldering them bodily out-is well known and popularly credited; but it
 has been politely doubted by many careful observers, notably by Waterton and Seebohm. How does the cuckoo get its eggs into the nests? This is a
 department of inquiry still affording
 scope to the curious One bird was
 shot with its egg in it's mouth, and Spurzheim says he saw one carrying an
 egg in it's feet. It is at least singular
 that cuckoos are able to insert their. ekks in the nests of small birds that are almost inaccessible to so bulky bird,
 and it would appear that the only pos. sible way to perform the feat is by in. serting the egg with the bill; and often,
 then, the egg is found in impossible places.-St. James Gazette.