. Animate creation : popular edition of "Our living world" : a natural history. Zoology; Zoology. THE CUCKOO. 431 female is smaller than her mate. In dimensions the Channel-Bill is about equal to the com- mon crow, but owing to the long and broad tail, wliich causes the bird to measure more than two feet in total length, it appears much larger than is really the case. There are few birds which are more widely known by good and evil report than the com- mon Cuckoo. As the harbinger of spring, it is always welcome to the ears of those who have just passed through the severities of wint
. Animate creation : popular edition of "Our living world" : a natural history. Zoology; Zoology. THE CUCKOO. 431 female is smaller than her mate. In dimensions the Channel-Bill is about equal to the com- mon crow, but owing to the long and broad tail, wliich causes the bird to measure more than two feet in total length, it appears much larger than is really the case. There are few birds which are more widely known by good and evil report than the com- mon Cuckoo. As the harbinger of spring, it is always welcome to the ears of those who have just passed through the severities of winter ; and as a heartless mother, an abandoner of its offspring, and an occupier of other homes it lias been subjected to general reprobation. As is usual in such cases, both opinions are too sweeping; for the continual cry of " Cuck-oo ! cuck-oo !" however agreeable it may be on the first hearing, soon becomes monotonous and fatiguing to the ear ; and the mother Cuckoo is not so far lost to all feelings of maternity as to take no thought for r ? f'7NO'^; ^SM iv^«as§? CUCKOO.—Vuc^Uus canO'uti. her young, but ever remains near the place where it has deposited her agg and seems to keep watch over the foster-parents. It is well known that the female Cuclcoo does not make any nest, but places her egg in the nest of some small bird, and leaves it to the care of its unwitting foster-parents. Various birds are burdened with this charge, such as the hedge-warbler, the pied wagtail, the meadow- pipit, the red-backed shrike, the blackbird, and various finches. Generally, however, the three first are those preferred. Considering the size of the mother-bird, the egg of the Cuckoo is remarkably small, being about the same size as that of tlie skylark, although the latter bird has barely one-fourth the dimensions of the former. Tlie little birds, therefore, which are always careless about the color or fonn of an egg, provided that it be nearly the size of their own productio
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Keywords: ., bookauthorbr, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectzoology
