irds, is practised by many others elsewhere, and
in particular by the American troupials, or cattle-starlings. One of
these indeed goes even farther, since it entrusts its eggs to the care
of a nest-building cousin. There are also American cuckoos that build
their own nest and incubate their own eggs.

On the whole, our cuckoo is a friend to the farmer, for it destroys vast
quantities of hairy caterpillars that no other bird, resident or
migratory, would touch. On the other hand, no doubt, the numbers of
other small useful birds must suffer, not alone because the cuckoo sucks
their eggs, but also because, as has been shown, the rearing of every
young cuckoo means the destruction of the legitimate occupants of the
nest. So far however as the farmer is concerned, this is probably
balanced by the reflection that a single young cuckoo is so rapacious as
to need all the insect food available.

The cuckoo, like the woodcock, is supposed to have its forerunner. Just
as the small horned owl, which reaches our shores a little in advance
of the latter, is popularly known as the "woodcock owl," so also the
wryneck, which comes to us about the same time as the first of the
cuckoos, goes by the name of "cuckoo-leader." It is never a very
conspicuous bird, and appears to be rarer nowadays than formerly.
Schoolboys know it best from its habit of hissing like a snake and
giving them a rare fright when they cautiously insert a predatory hand
in some hollow tree in search of a possible nest. It is in such
situations that, along with titmice and some other birds, the wryneck
rears its young; and it doubtless owes many an escape to this habit of
hissing, accompanied by a vigorous twisting of its neck and the
infliction of a sufficient peck, easily mistaken in a moment of panic
for the bite of an angry adder. Thus does Nature protect her weaklings.

JUNE

VOICES OF THE NIGHT

VOICES OF THE NIGHT

The majority of nocturnal animals, more particularly those bent on
spoliation, are strangely silent. True, frogs croak in the marshes, bats
shrill overhead at so high a pitch that some folks cannot hear them, and
owls hoot from their ruins in a fashion that some vote melodious and
romantic, while others associate the sound rather with midnight crime
and dislike it accordingly. The badger, on the other hand, with the
otter and fox--all of them sad thieves from our point of view--have
learnt, whatever their primeval habits, to go