The Cuckoo in the Nest

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 812, 18 February 1955, Page 23

The Cuckoo in the Nest

BY

HELEN

WILSON

happened to hear Dr. R. A. Falla answering a question about how the cuckoo managed to place its egg in the nest of a small bird. He said, "Many a scientist would like to know the answer to that question." Many years ago-perhaps 35 -I saw what could. have been the answer. ° . I think it was in February, 1953, that I heard a BBC broadcast by a scientist who had observed an English cuckoo paying its egg into a skylark’s nest. It occurred to me that a talk on my own observations of New Zealand cuckoos might be interesting. So, while in Auckland a few weeks later, I broadcast a talk hoping that some listener might tell me if what I had seen was a discovery or a commonplace. No comment whatever came to me. And not until I heard Dr. Falla’s words did I think I had seen something new. This is the story: An Englishman with two sons fresh from school bought land in the King Country, adjoining ours. ° The boys, having some knowledge of bird life, were keenly interested in the bush and all their new environment. In --their rambles they found a koriroriro’s nest. (it is often called the grey warbler and is one of the most diminutive birds of the bush.) It was hanging well hidden on the end of a branch not far from the homestead. Shortly afterwards they heard the call of the longtailed cuckoo and noticed that every bird in the bush was suddenly terrified into silence. I was visiting their mother when the boys came in to tell us that the cuckoo had been hovering about and was now in the very tree where the little grey warblers had built. Although we thought it impossible that the cuckoo should attempt to steal so tiny a nursery, we went out to get a sight of the bird from close quarters. She was crouched on the branch at the end of which hung the nest, deliberately flattened along it and apparently motionless, The little owners of the nest stood between her and their nest, also motionless, with the feathers of head and neck lifted but not quite erect. We thought they were either mesmerised or paralysed with fright. We discussed this afterwards, but while watching we were silent and screened ik a recent children’s session I

by bushes. Nevertheless, the bird suspected publicity and after some five or ten minutes suddenly flew away. In a few days the boys were sure that the lower part of the nest was distended and that they saw signs of movement. They had picked up under the nest a minute scrap of something which was clearly a dead nestling, and the little birds could be seen feverishly gathering food. Suspecting a young cuckoo they determined to take it when old enough and make sure. Alas! One morning the bottom of the nest had fallen out and no bird could be found. The next spring our neighbours again found a tiny hanging nest not far from the same place. They were sure the same pair had built it; and in time they rang us up to say that a cuckoo had appeared and if it intended mischief they would stop it. They had found, on the grass directly under the hanging nest, a large egg. They knew that in the nesting season birds" eggs were often found lying about promiscuously, but this one was stand-_ ing upright on its broad end and was_ too large for the egg of any other bird they knew. The brother who found it_ left it for a matter of minutes, and when he returned it had gone. Keen on the quest, I went over to our neighbours as soon as I could, but was too. late: the elder son had shot the cuckoo, and the family was gathered round the kitchen table admiring the gay ‘plumage. Although not comparable in bright colours with the shining cuckoo, the longtailed is an impressive and handsome bird. Inexpertly, but with great care-and feeling a little ghoulish-we examined the specimen. There were no eggs in the ovariole, but a_ bulging wattle on the left side of the head revealed an egg, and after some trouble we thought we felt a passage connecting its position with the root of the tongue, Now we’ felt we could reconstruct the story. The cuckoo we had seen the previous year flattened along the branch might not, as we had thought, have been motionless, but was slowly and imperceptibly edging itself towards the nursery she intended for her young. When she had insinuated herself to the end of the branch she would be directly above the nest and in a good strategic position

to regurgitate the egg into her beak and place it dexterously into the opening. We were more convinced that our conclusions were correct because a hanging nest, so tied with strings and leaves across its entrance, makes it quite impossible for a bird larger than its builder to lay an egg in it. But why, the scientist will ask, did ~ we not send our specimen and our observations to the Auckland Museum and have it examined? We _ were pioneers in the backblocks. We received and despatched a mail once a week. To post an interim letter meant a ride of six miles over a road that, though drying for the summer, was filled with deep mud holes, stumps and roots that tripped up a horse. And there was work to be done on the land.