Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/290

262

May 12th, while on the road between the villages of Hamstreet and Woodchurch, in Kent, I had, to me, the unique experience of seeing a Cuckoo in the very act of placing its egg in the nest of a Robin. The facts are briefly as follows:—I happened to be sitting down by the roadside watching a Wryneck through my glasses, when a Cuckoo flew over my head, and, turning sharply, alighted on a fence-rail about two hundred yards down the road. From there she flew across and entered the opposite hedge, which was raised on a bank covered with a thick undergrowth of nettles, grass, &c. The Cuckoo had scarcely disappeared before she again re-appeared with a small bird in close pursuit, in which two or three Starlings, which evidently had young in the farm-steading opposite, joined. At this moment a man passing in a cart disturbed the Cuckoo, which, flying over the hedge, alighted in the meadow beyond. Noticing the bird's apparent disinclination to leave the place, I walked down the road and lay quietly on the grass opposite to, and at a distance of twelve yards (paced) from, the spot where the Cuckoo first entered the hedge. I had not sat there for more than two minutes when back came the Cuckoo, gliding along the hedge, and finally alighting with a loud squawk exactly opposite me. What struck me at once from this and many subsequent views of the bird was the swollen appearance of her throat, which half-way down showed a distinct protuberance, as might well have been caused by an egg. I several times turned my glasses on her, and at that short range I could plainly see the feathers sticking out over the distended part of her gullet; and, as my subsequent remarks will show, it seems to me that this swelling was caused by her egg. From the moment of alighting to the close of this domestic tragedy, the Cuckoo was attacked with the