A dictionary of British birds : reprinted from Montagu's Ornithological dictionary, and incorporating the additional species described by Selby; Yarrell, in all three editions, and in natural-history journals / compiled and edited by Edward Newman.

George Montagu

Date:: 1866

Credit: A dictionary of British birds : reprinted from Montagu's Ornithological dictionary, and incorporating the additional species described by Selby; Yarrell, in all three editions, and in natural-history journals / compiled and edited by Edward Newman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$position is in a -\nndow exposed to the full wai-mth of the sun. In his habits he is very bold, never showing any signs of fear, but seems iueapable of nfl’ection, throwing himself into an attitude of de- fence, and fiercely pecldug at any one w'ho attempts to touch him. His disposition is unsociable, and when a tame dove alights neai- him he utters an angi7 chat- tering note, and will not rest until he has driven the intruder away. Tliis ex- pression of displeasure is his only note, excepting on three or four occasions, when he has been heoi-d to utter a loud sound like the shai'p bark of a little dog.” In the volume for 1840, at p. 1394, is another note on the same subject, by Mr. Streat- field: in this instance the young Cuckoo was found in a Titlai-k’s nest, and was so voracious that in one day it ate sixty-five butterflies and the whole of a boiled hen's egg. In the volume for 1860, at p. 7104, is a third anecdote of the same kind, from the pen of the Eev. Ai-thur Hussey, as fol- lows :—“I am enabled to give the bio- graphy, unluckily but a short one, of a Cuckoo which -was taken late last summer from the nest of a Greenfinch, and came into possession of a shoemaker’s wife, a great petter of birds, in the village of Sta- verton, Northamptonshii’e. I first heard of the bird early in January, from a lady, my sister, who had seen it a few days pre- riously. It was fed upon meat and eggs, was brought up, unconfined, in the living- room of the cottage, where it perched as near the fire as practicable, and was as tame as a cat, one or two of which ani- mals were its companions and playfellows. The night was passed in a box covered up, close to the fire-place. When the Cuckoo was visited by my informant it appeai'ed like a young bird not fully fiedged, but its mistress stated it to be then moulting, and that it had been well feathei’ed some time befoi-e. That the Cuckoo had sur- vived the severe cold of last December was a circumstance to afford some hope of preserving it through an English ^vinter, though, on the other hand, the fact of its moulting during that season was un- favoui-able to such a prospect. However, the bird lived some time longer, but I heard a few weeks ago that it bad died (appropriately?) on the 1st of April, so that this experiment to acclimatize a Cuckoo, if promising at the commencement, has not succeeded better than others.” In the volume for 1847, at 1038, is a record by Mr. Slater that he watched a pair of Titlarks throw their own young out of the nest in which a young Cuckoo had been hatched. Many naturalists have noticed the fact of small birds attending on the Cuckoo; the first of these is recorded in the volume for 1849, at p. 2589; in this instance the attendant bird was a Titlark, and when the Cuckoo was shot the Titlark came and settled on its body. The ques- tion how the parent Cuckoo conveyed its egg to the nest of another bird has often been discussed, and has been definitely settled at p. 3145, by Mr. Harper, of Norwich, who writes thus : — “ On the morning of the 14th of April I was out shooting with a friend, for the pur- pose of obtaining specimens in Ornitho- logy, and having arrived at the point of the river called the Alder Can-, situated midway between Norwich and 'Thorpe, I heard from an adjoining tree the well- known note of a Cuckoo, which I observed perched at a distance of twenty yards. I was about to fire, when over my head sailed another, with something between its mandibles. My curiosity was excited, and, lea\ing the other to speed on its way, I followed in a boat the flying Cuckoo, which I saw alight in an adjoining mea- dow. I reached the bird within twenty yards, and observed it in the act of pro- gressing, in a similar way to the crawling of a Pan-ot, by the side of a drain, -nith the substance still in its beak; after tra- versing some distance it stopped short, and at the same time I fired. Upon near- ing it I found the substance before men- tioned to be its egg, I am sorry to say broken, but still quite satisfactoi-y to me that such was the case. Upon dissection I found the cloaca contained another egg of nearly the same size, but without the calcareous envelope. I think in all pro- bability this bird was searching for a nest, perhaps that of the Meadow Pipit (Anthus pratensis), for the depositing of its egg.” Instances of the Cuckoo singing by night have been recorded over and over again in the ‘ Zoologist’ and other periodicals; the circumstance is by no means uncommon, but the records must be received with caution : the facility -nith which this fa- vourite caU-note is imitated induces many a youngster to repeat it at aU seasons of the year.] [Cuckoo, Great Spotted. — Cuculus glan- darius, Yarrell, ii. 205.— “ The adult male bird has the bealv bluish black ; the irides yellow; the head and cheeks dai-k ash- colour ; the feathers on the top and back of the head considerably elongated, form- ing a conspicuous crest; the back, scapu- lai-8, wing-coverts, rump, and upper tail- coverts, greyish black; most of the wing- feathers, wing and tail-coverts, with more or less white at the end ; the tail-feathers graduated, the two in the centre brown, the outer feathers darker, but all ai-o tipped with white j throat and chest red-$