THE CUCKOO’S SECRET FILMED.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4365, 13 January 1922, Page 3

THE CUCKOO’S SECRET FILMED.

By Sir William Beach Thomas. The cuckoo’s secret which in some details has puzzled the world’s naturalists for centuries, has been re-, corded on the film. The cuckoo has a sleuth tracking down the prospective foster-parents, the cuckoo as a selfmesmerist or psycho-analyist concen trating her gaze on the foster-parents, the glide to the nest, the amazingly rapid laying of the egg and theft of another egg, the frantic attack by the foster-mother—all these are shown in cinema photographs taken at the climax at a few feet’s distance. The pictures were made by a London protograph.er who had never seen a cuckoo in his life till he was put into a low, heath-covered wigwam on a Worcestershire common this summer ; but the heart of the discovery is due to Mr Edgar Chance, a hardworking director of more than one branch of scientific commerce in Birmingham and elsewhere. He has watched one female .cuckoo for four years and fpund in this time 61 of her eggs—all the eggs she laid, at any rate, in the last two years. At the finish, so complete was his mental analysis, he could tell at what hour of day she was going to lay, and where, even from what branch of what tree, she would perch.

.Finally he was able to wire for his kinema operator on the eve of the first egg-Jaying, and set him in his "hide” within three yards of the nest a few hours before the event.

Other .observers blew the whistle when the moment came for turning the handle of the camera and Mr Chance timed every stage of the proceedings with a stop-watch. The feat is the most remarkable in the annals of bird-watching in England, and the discoveries are many and curious.

What this cuckoo did was first to return each year from Africa to her native Worcestershire common, to find suitable nests by watching all the pairs of meadow pipits (whose eggs most nearly resembled hers), tp focus her attention on the birds selected for the next laying; and, finally, when her ecstatic concentration reached its climax, to glide straight to the nest, pick out one of the vic-i tim’s eggs, and, still holding it in her beak, slip on to the nest, lay her egg —a process taking five seconds only —and dash off at full speed, butted and plucked by the infuriated pipits. Even the exact moment ofl each rapid wing-beat is pictured. One of the discoveries is that she lays many mpre eggs than the textbooks allow —one every 48 hours for a month or so, if she can find a suitable nest.