Page:Natural History, Birds.djvu/227

214 those whose children it has thus ruthlessly murdered. In this country the Hedge Sparrow, the Pied Wagtail, the Pipit, and the Robin, are the species most frequently chosen by the Cuckoo to be the nurses of her offspring; and it must be confessed, that, notwithstanding the destruction of their own callow brood, the charge is responded to with the utmost assiduity and tenderness. The periods of the Cuckoo's arrival and departure, and some other particulars in its calendar, are recorded in the following rustic rhymes, probably of considerable antiquity, which we have