THE CUCKOO
In an old pear-tree with dense foliage, at the foot of the garden, a
black-headed warbler had built its nest. Day by day Jules had watched
the bird as it brought blades of dry grass, one by one, and wove them
into the shape of a cup, after which it furnished the interior with a
hair mattress. Then came the eggs, to the number of five, light
chestnut in color, marbled with darker streaks. Parting the branches
very gently in the mother’s absence, and standing on tiptoe, Jules had
peeped into the nest, but of course without touching anything; he had
merely cast a rapid glance at the pretty cluster of five eggs lying
together at the bottom. The laying was over, his uncle told him; now
would begin the incubation, and in a few days five little creatures,
blind and featherless, would at the slightest rustling of the foliage
stretch their yellow beaks wide open in mute appeal for food. Already
Jules was looking forward to the good time he would have in watching,
from a distance, the bringing up of the brood, and was planning how,
when the little birds should have grown a trifle larger, he would put
some small caterpillars and worms on the end of a stick and drop them
into the nest for the young ones to eat. Then before long the
new-fledged warblers would leave the nest and the garden would have
five more caterpillar-destroyers repaying with their services and
joyful songs the kind-hearted attentions of their boy friend.
That was what Jules was eagerly looking forward to yesterday, but
to-day he returns from his visit to the nest with a troubled look on
his face. A strange thing has happened: with the warbler’s five eggs
there is a sixth one, a little larger and of a different color. Whence
comes this strange egg? Who put it in the nest, and why?
Uncle Paul, on being consulted, went to the nest and came back with the
egg.
“Your warbler’s nest, my dear child,” he said, “has had a fortunate
escape; but for your visit this morning the young birds would have been
lost almost as soon as they were hatched. This egg that I have brought
back is a cuckoo’s egg.”
“But I don’t see how it came to be in the warbler’s nest or what danger
it threatened to the young birds that are coming.”
“You will see when I tell you the cuckoo’s habits. It is a curious
story. The cuckoo is the bird that in early spring, when the meadows
are sprinkled with violets and the trees are just putting forth their
leaves, keeps repeating its cry of cuckoo, cuckoo, in a clear and
plaintive tone.”
“I have often heard it,” said Jules, “singing on the edges of woods,
but have never been able to get a good look at it.”
“I have seen it flying away,” Emile put in, “and it seemed to me pretty
large.”
“The cuckoo is at least as large as a turtle-dove,” their uncle
continued. “Its plumage is ashy gray on the back and white underneath,
with numerous brown crosswise stripes resembling those seen on many
birds of prey. The wings are long, as is also the tail, which is
spotted and tipped with white. Despite its likeness to the goshawk and
sparrow-hawk, the cuckoo is not to be classed as a bird of prey. Its
talons lack the necessary strength, and its beak, which is rather long,
is flattened and only slightly curved. Those are neither the hooked
claws nor the savage beak of a bird living the life of a murderer. The
cuckoo’s food consists entirely of insects and caterpillars. You
remember the processionaries of the oak tree, those frightful black
caterpillars that spin large silken nests against the trunk of a tree
and bristle with barbed hairs that cause such terrible itching if you
touch them?”
“Yes,” answered Jules; “and you told us that the cuckoo eats those
caterpillars.”
“It feasts on them, as it does on all hairy caterpillars; but the hairs
are rolled up into a ball in the stomach and thrown up through the
beak. As a greedy devourer of insects and caterpillars the cuckoo
deserves protection; the only regret is that a multitude of little
birds most useful to us should be destroyed by it. Let us consider the
facts of the case.
“The female cuckoo never builds a nest, nor does she know how to hatch
out her own young; but let us plead the best excuse we can for her. Her
breast seems to be so formed as not to impart enough warmth to eggs to
make them hatch; and, more than that, she lays so often throughout the
summer as to leave her no time for making a home of her own. In short,
this bird never knows the joy of taking care of her young. It is not
because she will not hatch her own eggs, but because she cannot. She
has to leave this work to other birds.”
“Then the cuckoo’s egg I found in the garden nest was left there for
the warbler to take care of?” Jules inquired.
“Precisely. Now see by what wonderful planning the strange egg comes to
be adopted by another mother. Bear in mind that the cuckoo lives
exclusively on insects. The young cuckoo must have caterpillars. Where
will food of this sort be found if not in the nests of birds that feed
on insects, as for instance warblers, redbreasts, tomtits,
nightingales, stonechats, wagtails, and others? It is to just these
nests that the cuckoo goes. Sometimes it may chance to lay its eggs in
the nests of birds that live on seeds, such as linnets, bullfinches,
greenfinches, or yellow-hammers; but even then the choice is wise; for
if the foster-parents are eaters of seeds they bring up their young on
worms, which are easier to digest, and so the little cuckoo finds in
these nests food suited to its needs. But the cuckoo’s eggs are never
laid in the nests of quails, partridges, or other species whose young
are granivorous from the beginning. In a brood whose habitual diet was
not theirs the changelings would surely die of hunger.”
“But how,” asked Jules, “does the cuckoo know what nests to choose and
what ones not to choose, when it lays its eggs?”
“If it knew why it laid its eggs where it does, I should have to admit
that the cuckoo’s sagacity surpassed man’s; but it does not know at all
the reason for its choice. A wise Providence has arranged everything
for the bird. The egg—which, judged by the cuckoo’s size, should be as
large as a pigeon’s or a turtle-dove’s—is hardly as big as a sparrow’s,
so that it can easily find a place in the warbler’s or even the wren’s
tiny nest without arousing the adoptive mother’s suspicions. Moreover,
this egg is variable in its color, as if the better to harmonize with
the coloring of those with which it will be incubated, whether in this
or that or the other nest. Sometimes the cuckoo’s egg is ash-colored,
at other times red, green, or pale blue. It may closely resemble the
sparrow’s eggs, or it may be mottled with spots of smaller or larger
size, in lesser or greater numbers; or, again, it may be marbled with
black streaks. But, despite these variations, it is always easy to see
the difference between the cuckoo’s egg and the others in a nest. If
one of the eggs is found to differ from the others in shape and color,
that one certainly came from the cuckoo. By that sign alone I
recognized the egg we have here from the warbler’s nest.”
“The other five,” Jules declared, “are as like one another as so many
drops of water; but the sixth, which you have there, is very
different.”
“And that is why I am sure it belongs to the cuckoo,” replied his
uncle.
“The cuckoo seems to me,” said Louis, “very large to be able to get
into such a small nest as the warbler’s, the redbreast’s, or the
nightingale’s, so as to lay its egg there.”
“That is not what the bird does. The egg is laid on the ground,
anywhere; then the mother takes it up in her beak, puts it in a sort of
pocket at the base of her gullet—a pocket provided for that purpose—and
flies through the neighboring thickets on the lookout for a place for
its final reception. When she finds a nest to suit her she stretches
her neck over the edge, opens her beak, and lets the egg gently drop
among the others. That done, the cuckoo flies away and never returns to
learn the result. Other eggs are placed in the same way, here and
there, one by one, in different nests.”
“And do the owners of the nests make no objections?” asked Jules.
“If they are at home they receive the cuckoo with angry pecks and chase
her away; but she usually succeeds in choosing the right moment and
approaches the nest by stealth when the owners are absent.”
“But when they come back they must see at least that there is a strange
egg in the nest and throw it out.”
“Not at all. Whether or not the mother bird perceives that there is an
egg too many, I could not say. But at any rate, as there must be
cuckoos in the world, things are so arranged that their species shall
not become extinct, and all the eggs in the nest are watched over and
hatched with impartial care, until the last young bird is out. At first
all goes well enough: the young ones need but little food, and for one
more the parents can easily find enough worms. All are fed alike, with
no more for the children of the house than for the stranger.
“But pretty soon the young cuckoo is found to be growing faster than
the others; it will soon need for itself alone all the food that its
foster-parents can possibly secure with the utmost industry; it is
always opening its wide beak, always complaining of hunger. Moreover,
it is cramped for room in the little house of hair and wool. Its
featherless body, squatting there flat and red, its large head, its
bottomless abyss of a beak, its big, bulging eyes, all give it the
appearance of a toad sitting at the bottom of the nest. There is no
longer room in the house for all its inmates, nor yet enough food to
live on. Then a dreadful deed is done. The young cuckoo slips under one
of the little birds, takes it on its back, which is hollowed as if for
the purpose, and holds it there by slightly raising its wings. Dragging
itself backward to the raised rim of the nest, it rests a moment, and
then throws the burden over.”
“The horrid creature throws out of the nest the little one of the bird
that feeds it?” exclaimed Emile incredulously.
“Yes, in cold blood, so as to have more room for itself. With the tips
of its wings it feels around for a moment to make sure the little bird
is gone, and then returns to the bottom of the nest to go through the
same process with another. And so they all go, one after another, to
the very last; all are thrown out of the nest.”
“I’d like to be there to catch him at it—the scoundrel!” was Emile’s
comment.
“What becomes of the poor little things pushed out of their own home by
the ungrateful young cuckoo? If the nest is high above the ground all
perish, crushed by their fall, and the ants immediately begin to suck
their blood. If it is low, some live and take refuge in the moss, where
the mother comes to console them and bring them something to eat. The
cuckoo remains in sole possession of the nest.”
“And the horrid toad will starve to death there,” said Jules. “The
father and mother, now that their brood is destroyed, won’t bring it
anything more to eat.”
“That is where you are mistaken. They continue to feed it liberally, as
if nothing had happened; they perform wonders to satisfy its big
appetite; they do not allow themselves a minute’s rest in their efforts
to fill that beak that is always open and is wide enough to swallow the
nurses themselves.”
“Then the warbler isn’t afraid of her greedy nursling that might gobble
her up any moment?” queried Jules.
“Although she is its mother only by chance, she is devoted to it. She
comes joyfully with a caterpillar at the end of her beak while the
cuckoo gapes at the edge of the nest, as ugly as a little monster. With
no tremor of fear the warbler delivers the mouthful by putting her head
into the yawning gulf. The gulf closes, swallows, and yawns again,
demanding something more, and all haste is made to satisfy its needs.”
“Kind warbler!” murmured Jules. “What self-denial in order to bring up
the ugly rascal that has ravaged her nest!”
“So it has to be,” Uncle Paul rejoined, “or we should long ago have
been left with no cuckoos in the world to help us get rid of the
processionary caterpillars of the oak-tree.”
“All the same, I don’t like that bird.” And with this Jules took up the
cuckoo’s egg he had found in the garden nest. “May I?” said he to his
uncle, with a gesture.
“Yes, I have no objection,” answered Uncle Paul, who preferred five
warblers in his garden to one vagabond cuckoo. And smack went the egg
as the boy dashed it to the ground.