THE CUCKOO IN THE NEST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 816, 18 March 1955, Page 5

THE CUCKOO IN THE NEST

Sir-In the article under the above title in your February 18 number, Helen Wilson mentions hearing Dr. R. A, Falla answering a question over the air in a children’s session about how a cuckoo manages to place its egg in the nest of a small bird. I think this must have beén the Wednesday ‘Nature Question Time" session from 2YA on December 22 last at which Dr. Falla did, in fact, answer a question, from Malcolm Anderson of Henderson, Auckland, on this subject. My Society organises this series of sessions and I was at the table, in my capacity of Weka the questionmaster, with Dr. Falla at the session referred to. I was expecting him to mention another observation reported some years ago to my Society and published in its journal Forest and Bird, but he told me afterwards that he could not remember the details clearly enough. Helen Wilson’s article may have whetted your readers’ interest and they may like to hear about this other observation. Mr. H. J. Payne, of Wairoa, while on shepherding duties, used to boil his billy in one spot every day and while there watched a grey warbler day by day building its nest, three eggs being finally laid on successive days. On the fourth day he saw a bird fly straight to the grey warbler’s nest and on closer investigation saw a shining cuckoo actually in the nest with its bill sticking out of the opening. After about two minutes the shining cuckoo emerged and Mr. Payne saw a fourth egg in the nest, slightly bigger and of a different colour. The shining cuckoo, a very much smaller bird than the long-tailed cuckoo, could probably squeeze into a grey warbler’s nest without doing much damage, if any. Helen Wilson’s story of a long-tailed cuckoo with an egg in a wattle at the side of its head from which a passage apparently went to the mouth is most

interesting, and will add to the sum of the observations, gradually building on a process on which no scientist will as yet give a definite pronouncement. There have been other reports from time to time of observations of both methods of inserting eggs into other birds’ nests by cuckoos-by carrying the egg in the bill and by actual laying. These reports have been too few as yet to establish definitely what is the usual method. One thing in Helen Wilson’s article calls for a note of warning--the shooting of the long-tailed cuckoo. Quite apart from the fact that the cuckoos are, and were under the old Act also, absolutely protected birds, one cannot view these parasitizing actions from the human viewpoint and nature should not be interfered with, except where it has got out of balance through man’s initial interference. Man may regard such usurpation as cruel but, after the first registering of fear or anger at the approach of the marauder to the vicinity of the nest, the birds do not appear to do so, else why should they feed the young cuckoo so assiduously? It is one of nature’s inscrutable provisions, which we cannot hope to understand and must not endeavour to upset, particularly with a lethal weapon.

R. H.

CARTER

Secretary, Forest

and Bird Protection Society of

New Zealand.