Cuckoo

“ There’s not one in twenty that you can believe.
The cuckoo’s a fine bird, she sings where she flies,
She brings us good tidings and tells us no lies,
She sucks of sweet flowers to keep her voice clear,
The more she sings cuckoo, the summer draws near. ”

“ The cuckoo is a sort of familiar chronicler, that gathers up the events of our lives, and brings them to our memory by his well-known voice. As he shouts over our heads, we call to mind the many summers the sweet scents of which we have inhaled, the rambles we have taken in the woods, our idolatry of nature, our innocent pleasures. ”

“ The cuckoo flies so much like the hawk, and so resembles it, as at the first glance to be barely distinguishable; but on watching more closely it will be seen that the cuckoo flies straight and level, with a gentle fluttering of the wings, which never seem to come forward, so that in outline he resembles a crescent, the convex side in front. ”

“ I asked myself whether there was not in his soul some deep-rooted instinct of creation, which the circumstances of his life had obscured, but which grew relentlessly, as a cancer may grow in the living tissues, till at last it took possession of his whole being and forced him irresistibly to action. The cuckoo lays its egg in the strange bird's nest, and when the young one is hatched it shoulders its foster-brothers out and breaks at last the nest that has sheltered it. ”

“ The young Cuckoo arrives into the world without a scrap of down or the sign of a feather on its dusky, ugly little body. Very soon after it is hatched it begins to show signs of great restlessness and energy, endeavouring to throw out whatever else there may be in the nest in the shape of eggs or young. Nature has equipped the little monster well for its murderous task, by providing a hollow between its broad shoulders for the reception of its victims. ”

“ The cuckoo, with its never-wearied song, is the joyful harbinger of spring, and is heard with delight by old and young. It lives chiefly upon hairy caterpillars; and, as it is always feeding, we can justly include the cuckoo among the useful birds. ”

“ Then on the very day of its birth the cuckoo seems to make up its mind that before long there will be no room in the nest for any one but itself, and actually pushes all its little foster brothers and sisters over the side, one after the other! And, strange to say, the mother bird does not seem to mind, but just gives all the food which her own young would have eaten to the cuckoo, and takes the greatest care of it in every way until it is able to fly. ”

“ The life of the baby hung on a thread; he scarcely seemed to breathe, but, when he was four years of age, the cuckoo cried three times over the cottage roof—a good omen, according to Polish superstition—and after that matters mended so that he somehow attained his tenth year. To be sure, he was always thin and delicate, with a slouching body and hollow cheeks. His hay-coloured hair fell over his clear, prominent eyes, that had a far-away look in them, as if he saw things hidden from others. ”

“ The cuckoo sitting silent in an assemblage of crows, appears as one of them in its form and colour of its feathers; and the graceful gait of the cuckoo, makes it known from the rest, as the wise man is marked in the company of fools. It is hence that every body is respected by his inward talents and outward deportment, more than by outer form and feathers. ”

“ The cuckoo ate up the slice, drank water from the brown jug—for he would take no beer—and flew into a snug hole which Spare scooped for him in the thatch of the hut. So the snow melted, the heavy rains came, the cold grew less, the days lengthened, and one sunny morning the brothers were awakened by the cuckoo shouting its own cry to let them know that at last the spring had come.
“Now,” said the bird, “I am going on my travels over the world to tell men of the spring. There is no country where trees bud or flowers bloom that I will not cry in before the year goes round. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Still through the deepening shadows rings the clear treble of the robin, and through all, like a whisper of peace, one hears the slumbrous voices of the doves.
Two cuckoos are still calling; one near at hand, whose loud notes, clear and mellow, seem to linger among the trees, dying slowly, like music in the roof of a cathedral. Another, more distant, answers him. They keep such perfect time that [Pg 61] the stronger voice overpowers half the answer, and, for the most part three notes alone are audible, the last one faint and low, and like a soft refrain:
Cuckoo! ”

“ You tar me and roll me in feathers until I look like a bird, then help me up into the large apple-tree, where I will cry,
"THE TAIL SLIPPED OUT OF HIS HANDS"
'Cuckoo, cuckoo!' until he thinks that the cuckoo has really come!" "You are a cunning woman," answered the troll, admiringly; "it shall be as you say." Upon this they retired, well pleased. Next morning Hans and the troll were sitting at the breakfast-table—the woman was outside—when all at once they heard the cuckoo chant from the apple-tree, "Cuckoo, cuckoo!" "Listen!" said the troll; "the cuckoo has come." ”

“ The young cuckoo struggled at the opening and screamed again.
“Don’t be drawing too much attention to yourself,” advised the woodpecker when he came to the opening again. “They might take you for a young hawk, you know.”
“Who might?” said the cuckoo. “The neighbors. They would pull a young hawk to pieces.”
“What am I to do?” said the young cuckoo.
“What’s in your nature to do?”
“My nature?” said the young cuckoo. “It’s my nature to swing myself on branches high up in a tree. It’s my nature to spread out my wings and fly over pleasant places. It is my nature to be alone. ”

“ Even by night they are not silent; but as the season advances the song is less frequently heard, and the cuckoo seems rather to avoid observation as much as possible, the more so since whenever it shows itself it is a signal for all the small birds of the neighbourhood to be up in its pursuit, just as though it were a hawk, to which indeed its mode of flight and general appearance give it an undoubted resemblance—a resemblance that misleads some into confounding it with the birds of prey, instead of recognizing it as a harmless if not a beneficial destroyer of hairy caterpillars. ”

“ The cuckoo is a sacred bird. It is safe from the gamekeeper’s gun. Its advent is welcomed with pleasure. “Have you heard the cuckoo?” is a question put by the fortunate person who first hears its notes to every person he meets. When it is ascertained that the cuckoo has arrived, parents give their children pence for luck, and they themselves take care not to leave their houses with empty pockets, for should they do so, those pockets, if the cuckoo is heard, will be empty all the year. ”

“ The cuckoo shows great sagacity in the disposal of its progeny; the fact is, the mother cuckoo is quite conscious of her own cowardice and of the fact that she could never help her young one in an emergency, and so, for the security of the young one, she makes of him a supposititious child in an alien nest. The truth is, this bird is pre-eminent among birds in the way of cowardice; it allows itself to be pecked at by little birds, and flies away from their attacks. ”

“ He wishes with his own eyes to see the female cuckoo—rare spectacle!—as she lays her egg on the ground and takes it in her bill to the nest in which it is destined to breed infanticide. He would sit day after day with a field-glass against his eyes in order personally to endorse or refute the evidence suggesting that the cuckoo does lay on the ground and not in a nest. ”

“ It was mainly the fault of the cuckoo, for he was a grumbling, mischief-making bird and used to spend a good deal of time talking to the daffodils. This particular spring he had taken up his abode in the oak tree, and was fond of talking of all the grand things he had seen, and a great many he had not seen, for the cuckoo is a bird of fine imagination; and at last, as I have already said, three of the daffodils made up their minds that to be a flower and live in a wood was a very dreadful thing, and not to be put up with any longer. ”

“ But inasmuch as the cuckoo seldom shows itself, inasmuch as it represents essentially the sun hidden in the clouds, and as we know that the sun hidden in the clouds has several contradictory aspects, as a wise hero that penetrates everything, as an intrepid hero that defies every danger, as a betrayed hero, as a deceived husband, a traitor, a monster or a demon, so the cuckoo also has an ungrateful and sinister aspect. The adulterer who visits in secret the wife of another, becomes the absent husband that is travelling, the husband in the forest, whilst his wife entertains guests at home ”

“ The cuckoo is the bird we associate with the name of the vale of sunshine and of flowers, and yet its wandering voice brings back to him the thought of his vanished childhood. We have already noticed the almost sacred value which Wordsworth attaches to the impressions of his youth, and even to the memory of these impressions which remains with him to console his maturer life. ”

“ Just then Robert saw the Cuckoo on a tree near by, winking one eye, and laughing until her sides shook, and exclaimed: "I see how it is: that old thief of a Cuckoo has laid an egg in our nest. I will throw her ugly child out, and she can look after it herself;" and he made a dive for the little Cuckoo, but Linny caught him by his tail-feathers, saying:
"No, no; poor little fellow, he will die if you throw him on the ground. Let him stay until he gets too big for the nest." ”

“ The size of the egg of the cuckoo does not vary much from that of the bird in whose nest it is deposited. When the young sparrow, therefore, and the intruder first come into life, they are pretty much on an equality; but unhappily for the foster-brethren, this equality does not last long: the cuckoo's growth rapidly outstrips that of his companions, and he immediately exercises his new powers with abundant selfishness and cruelty. ”

“ This concise interrogation characterises the seeming ubiquity of the voice of the Cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of a corporeal existence; the imagination being tempted to this exertion of her power by a consciousness in the memory that the Cuckoo is almost perpetually heard throughout the season of Spring, but seldom becomes an object of sight.
Thus far of images independent of each other, and immediately endowed by the mind with properties that do not inhere in them, upon an incitement from properties and qualities the existence of which is inherent and obvious. ”

“ In the female cuckoo, therefore, the maternal instinct is entirely wanting, which, though it acts in obedience to an imperious law of nature, makes it a hateful bird. As soon as it quits the shell, it begins to exhibit its odious qualities. When the cuckoo's egg is placed in the nest of the hedge-sparrow, for example, the deluded mother perceives no difference between the alien production and her own. She sits, therefore, on what she finds, and having no idea of numbers, of course never thinks of counting the eggs. ”

“ To many others among the inferior animals, man deals forth his unthinking reproaches. To the cuckoo, for example, he objects to her habit of obtruding her egg or eggs into other people's premises, and leaving them there to be hatched by sparrow, wry-neck, or starling, as the case may be. But while bearing thus hard upon the cuckoo, he forgets the terrible curse, under which, like another Cain, she walks about the earth, urged forward by some resistless impulse, and condemned to the eternal repetition of two analogous notes—cuckoo, cuckoo. ”

“ The rather doleful, straightforward repetition of the singer's name is not heard every day; the cuckoo, too, has his moods.
I have heard this bird nearly every summer of my life, and never any departure from the old, monotonous strain, until recently (1888) . Early one June morning, sultry and warm, a bird was exercising his voice in a manner that set me on the alert; it was the voice of a cuckoo, but not the cuckoo's song:
At first thought, it was some bird that had practiced under a cuckoo master. ”

“ The young Cuckoo is no sooner hatched than he employs his infant strength to get rid of the true children of his foster-parents, in order to be the only one to profit by their attentions; he glides under the frail creatures, gets them on his back—where he holds them by means of his raised wings—and precipitates them one after another from the nest. ”

“ It was known to the ancients that the Cuckoo leaves its eggs to be hatched by other birds, but they mingled fact with fable, believing, or at all events asserting, that the young Cuckoo devoured not only its foster brothers and sisters, but ultimately its foster parents. ”

“ It reads like a tale from the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ in which we sometimes encounter human beings, good, or bad, or merely fantastic, who wander about the world disguised as birds. Only when we see and handle the cuckoo’s egg placed in the hedge-sparrow’s, or pipit’s, or wagtail’s nest, when we see the large hawk-like young cuckoo being fed and tenderly cared for by its diminutive foster-parent, do we realise the extraordinary nature of such an instinct. ”

“ The cuckoo is simply excited by the perception of quite determinate sorts of nest, which already contain eggs, to drop her own into them, and throw the others out, because this perception is a direct stimulus to these acts. It is impossible that she should have any notion of the other bird coming and sitting on her egg. ”