My Studio Neighbors | Page 7

out
of sight, she had stolen slyly upon the nest, and after a very brief
interval as slyly retreated, leaving her questionable compliments,
presumably with a self-satisfied chuckle. The intruded egg is so like its
fellow as to be hardly distinguishable except in its slightly larger size.
It is doubtful whether the sparrow, in particular, owing to this similarity,
ever realizes the deception. Indeed, the event is possibly considered a
cause for self-congratulation rather than otherwise--at least, until her
eyes are opened by the fateful dénouement of a few weeks later. And
thus the American cow-bird outcuckoos the cuckoo as an "attendant on
the spring," taking her pick among the nurseries of featherdom, now
victimizing the oriole by a brief sojourn in the swinging hammock in
the elm, here stopping a moment to leave her charge to the care of an
indigo-bird, to-morrow creeping through the grass to the secreted nest
of the Maryland yellow-throat, or Wilson's thrush, or chewink. And,
unaccountable as it would appear, here we find the same deadly token
safely lodged in the dainty cobweb nest of the vireo, a fragile pendent
fabric hung in the fork of a slender branch which in itself would barely
appear sufficiently strong to sustain the weight of a cow-bird without
emptying the nest.
Indeed, the presence of this intruded egg, like that of the European
cuckoo in similar fragile nests, has given rise to the popular belief that
the bird must resort to exceptional means in these instances. Sir
William Jardine, for instance, in an editorial foot-note in one of Gilbert
White's pages, remarks:
"It is a curious fact, and one, I believe, not hitherto noticed by

naturalists, that the cuckoo deposits its egg in the nests of the titlark,
robin, and wagtail by means of its foot. If the bird sat on the nest while
the egg was laid, the weight of its body would crush the nest and cause
it to be forsaken, and thus one of the ends of Providence would be
defeated. I have found the eggs of the cuckoo in the nest of a
white-throat, built in so small a hole in a garden wall that it was
absolutely impossible for the cuckoo to have got into it."
In the absence of substantiation, this, at best, presumptive evidence is
discounted by the well-attested fact that the cuckoo has frequently been
shot in the act of carrying a cuckoo's egg in its mouth, and there is on
record an authentic account of a cuckoo which was observed through a
telescope to lay her egg on a bank, and then take it in her bill and
deposit it in the nest of a wagtail.
There is no evidence to warrant a similar resource in our cow-bird,
though the inference would often appear irresistible, did we not know
that Wilson actually saw the cow-bird in the act of laying in the
diminutive nest of a red-eyed vireo, and also in that of the bluebird.
And what is the almost certain doom of the bird-home thus
contaminated by the cow-bird?
[Illustration]
The egg is always laid betimes, and is usually the first to hatch, the
period of incubation being a day or two less than that of the eggs of the
foster-parent. And woe be to the fledglings whom fate has associated
with a young cow-bird! He is the "early bird that gets the worm." His is
the clamoring red mouth which takes the provender of the entire family.
It is all "grist into his mill," and everything he eats seems to go to
appetite--his bedfellows, if not thus starved to death, being at length
crushed by his comparatively ponderous bulk, or ejected from the nest
to die. It is a pretty well established fact that the cuckoo of Europe
deliberately ousts its companion fledglings--a fact first noted by the
famous Dr. Jenner. And Darwin has even asserted that the process of
anatomical evolution has especially equipped the young cuckoo for
such an accomplishment--a practice in which some accommodating

philosophic minds detect the act of "divine beneficence," in that "the
young cuckoo is thus insured sufficient food, and that its
foster-brothers thus perish before they have acquired much feeling."
The following account, written by an eye-witness, bears the stamp of
authenticity, and is furthermore re-enforced by a careful and most
graphic drawing made on the spot, which I here reproduce, and fully
substantiates the previous statement by Dr. Jenner. The scene of the
tragedy was the nest of a pipit, or titlark, on the ground beneath a
heather-bush. When first discovered it contained two pipit's eggs and
the egg of a cuckoo.
"At the next visit, after an interval of forty-eight hours," writes Mrs.
Blackburn, "we found the young cuckoo alone in the nest, and both the
young pipits lying