[Contents]CHAPTER XXVTHE CUCKOOIn 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[189]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 ofcuckoo, 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.”[190]“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[191]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[192]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.”[193]“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.”[194]“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[195]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.”[196]“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. Andsmackwent the egg as the boy dashed it to the ground.[197]
[Contents]CHAPTER XXVTHE CUCKOOIn 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[189]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 ofcuckoo, 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.”[190]“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[191]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[192]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.”[193]“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.”[194]“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[195]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.”[196]“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. Andsmackwent the egg as the boy dashed it to the ground.[197]
CHAPTER XXVTHE 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[189]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 ofcuckoo, 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.”[190]“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[191]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[192]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.”[193]“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.”[194]“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[195]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.”[196]“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. Andsmackwent the egg as the boy dashed it to the ground.[197]
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[189]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 ofcuckoo, 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.”[190]
“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[191]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[192]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.”[193]
“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.”[194]
“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[195]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.”[196]
“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. Andsmackwent the egg as the boy dashed it to the ground.[197]