The architecture of birds / [Anon].

  • James Rennie
Date:
[1831]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The architecture of birds / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    appear upon the young parasite being hatched. Dr Potter is of opinion that it is the foster-mother which does this in the case of the cow-bird, and not the young of the latter, as Dr Jenner and Colonel Mon- ' tagu ascertained with respect to the cuckoo. Some of the’ circumstances, indeed, mentioned by Dr Potter, seem inexplicable on any other supposition; in the case, for example, of the nest of a blue-bird (Siaha Wilsonic), built in a hollow stump, contain- ing five eggs of the owner and one of the cow-bird. Three or four days after the discovery, he found a young cow-bird hatched, and only three eggs remain- ing, and one of the two which had disappeared lying at the bottom of the stump and rotten. ‘The cavity in the stump was a foot deep, the nest at the bottom, and the entrance perpendicular; and hence it would seem to ‘follow that the eggs could not have been ejected by the young cow-bird, but must have been carried out by its foster-mother. This is a wise pro- vision of nature under such circumstances; for if all the eggs were hatched, the nest could not contain the young, and unless the foster-parenis attended exclu- sively to the ae the species might soon non * extinct.
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