Part 3

Sometimes two young Cuckoos are hatched out in the same nest, and then a great struggle takes place between them for possession.

Very odd things occasionally occur in regard to Cuckoo’s eggs. I have found one, perfectly fresh, covered over with moss and down inside a Hedge Sparrow’s nest wherein the bird had laid none of her own. I have known one lie untouched outside a Meadow Pipit’s nest, but whether left there by the layer or cast forth by the owner of the structure it is impossible to say.

A short time ago a friend of mine found a Sedge Warbler’s nest near Gloucester with four eggs in it. The following day when we returned to the place the nest contained only three and a Cuckoo’s egg. As I wanted a photograph of a member of the species for the present work, I parted the thick sedge grass and, erecting my camera within a few feet, got everything ready and went into hiding beneath my apparatus. In less than two minutes she returned and, gazing into her home, suddenly grew greatly agitated and began to hammer the Cuckoo’s egg unmercifully with her bill. Fearing that she might break it before I secured a photograph, I jumped up and drove her away, at the same time calling my companion over to take care of the object of her resentment. Directly it was gone she assumed all her native gentleness of manner and sat down upon her own eggs quite happy.

Although young Cuckoos show so much sagacity in getting rid of any other occupants of the nest in which they have been hatched, they sometimes exhibit great stupidity in other directions. For instance, the young bird shown with his Tree Pipit foster-mother in the illustrations figuring in this chapter did not understand the alarm cry of the little brown bird at all. It did not matter however loudly she cried “danger” outside the nest up to a certain stage in his career, if he heard anything moving he shot up his head and opened his mouth very widely in request of food. Then, again, if a newly fledged Cuckoo happens to be resting on level ground and his foster-mother, say a Robin, Hedge Sparrow or Pied Wagtail, comes along with a supply of food, he has not the sense to accommodate himself to the stature of his wee parent, for, instead of lowering his great dappled head, he rears it as high in the air as he can, and the feeder has to stand on his shoulders, as shown in the accompanying photograph, and literally drop the food down his throat.

The food of adult Cuckoos is insectivorous, and consists largely of hairy caterpillars such as those of the Drinker Moth.

The Cuckoo sings upon the wing, and sometimes keeps up its vocal efforts all night long. It has been asserted that only the male cries “Cuckoo,” but this is not the fact, as females have been shot in the act of singing.

On the Yenisei its cry is “Hoo-hoo.”

Gilbert White, in his delightful “Natural History of Selborne,” says that some Cuckoos sing in D, some in D sharp, and some in C, and that the two former whilst performing together make a very disagreeable duet.

The notes of the bird are easily imitated by the human voice, and in the springtime I often amuse my friends by calling individuals into their gardens.

=THE ROBIN.=

I love Robin Redbreast above all other birds. He is a bold, handsome fellow, and one of the sweetest songsters of the grove. When the Nightingale and the Blackcap have gone to their winter quarters in the faraway sunny South, and both the Thrush and the Skylark are silent, courageous Redbreast mounts to the topmost branch of some sodden, leafless tree and defiantly pours out his sweet, silvery notes.

Poets of all ages have noticed this peculiar characteristic, and one of them has expressed it very happily in the following lines:

“Each woodland pipe is mute Save when the Redbreast mourns the falling leafs; Now plaintively, in interrupted trills, He sings the dirge of the departing year.”

There can be no doubt that the conditions under which the bird sings help to rivet our attention upon its performance, just in the same way that the Nightingale gains some of its popularity by singing at night time when other woodland vocalists are silent, and the Skylark by soaring away up in the blue vault of heaven whilst pouring out its far-sounding music.

Cock Robin has received a great deal of poetic attention, and it is amusing to note how differently the bards have expressed themselves in regard to this familiar bird “that swells its little breast so full of song.” Some of them say it warbles, others it whistles, tootles, carols, chirps, sings, sobs, mourns, and so on.

Any boy or girl who has wandered through the woods in winter will at once recognise the truth and beauty of the following lines from Cowper’s “Winter’s Walk at Noon”:

“No noise is here, or none that hinders thought; The Redbreast warbles still, but is content With slender notes and more than half suppressed; Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light From spray to spray where’er he rests, he shakes From many a twig the pendent drops of ice, That tinkle in the wither’d leaves below. Stillness accompanied with sounds so soft Charms more than silence.”

Numbers of beautiful legends have been woven round the bird. For instance, its ruddy breast is supposed to be worn in memory of the day when Jesus was led forth from Jerusalem to be crucified, and the wee bird perched upon the Cross and “tried with all its little might to diminish the anguish of the crown of thorns.”

It was an old and popular belief that Robins covered over the bodies of dead men with leaves, hence John Webster’s ballad:

“Call for the Robin Redbreast and the Wren, Since o’er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men”;

and the well-known one, “Babes in the Wood.”

Although Cock Robin is at all times a bold bird in defence of his rights, and at some seasons liable to be considered quarrelsome and spiteful, he undoubtedly has his good points. For instance, one has been known lovingly and diligently to feed his mate after she had sustained some injury to her bill which rendered her unable to peck for herself, and I have myself watched and even photographed a Redbreast in the charitable act of feeding a family of young Thrushes in the nest whilst their mother was away searching for very difficult-to-find food during a cold, dry spring morning.

Male Robins differ from the females only in the facts that they are slightly larger and have rather brighter orange-red breasts. These differences, however, are so very trifling that it is by no means easy for even the practised eye to notice them.

Robins commence to breed in March, and make their nests of bits of dead grass, leaves, and moss, with an inner lining of hair. At the beginning of the season building operations are conducted in quite a leisurely way, occupying as much as a fortnight, but later on no time is lost, and nests are made in a much shorter period.

Last spring I watched a female, quite unaided by her mate, who was singing very loudly morning, noon, and night in my garden, build a nest in three days. One morning she carried dead leaves and moss to her home five times in five minutes!

Although generally selecting holes in banks and walls where a brick or a stone has fallen out, this species is famed for its apparent love of odd situations in which to breed. I have found Robins’ nests in old tin cans, tea-pots, coffee-pots, kettles, jam-jars, biscuit boxes, cocoanut husks, fragments of bottles, and clock cases, and have seen them in bookcases and other places inside the much-used rooms of dwelling-houses.

Robins lay five or six eggs, as a rule, although as many as seven, and even eight, are occasionally found in one nest. They are white or light grey, blotched and freckled with dull light red. Sometimes the markings join each other nearly all over the shell, and at others they are collected round the larger end.

Young Robins, when they grow their first coats of feathers, do not have red breasts like their parents, but are dressed in varying shades of brown that render them very difficult to see when sitting still, amongst the lights and shades of a hedgerow. Directly they have donned their second coats of feathers, which happens in July and August, and become like their parents in appearance, they commence to try to sing. It is said that when they have been bred near Nightingales they borrow notes from that sweet-voiced bird, and introduce them into their own songs. I can readily believe this, because I have heard a Redbreast imitate the song of a Sedge Warbler so well that I was completely deceived until I saw the vocalist.