(14.00) RECEPTION TEST
2.5 (-2.25) Round the Countryside-2
ERIC PARKER : ' The Cuckoo '
THE MOST INTERESTING, because the most individual and unusual of our summer birds. The mellow, soft notes of the male must surely have been heard by everyone ; if you live in the country and keep your eyes open, the bird is often to be seen, hawk-like, slaty-blue in colour.
Our common cuckoo has been the subject of sayings, rhymes, and controversy. Its note thrilled Wordsworth ; some poets have been bored by its monotony. In spring it is a clear-cut 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo ! ', but when you hear the stuttered ' Cuc-cuckoo ' you know that summer is going.
To call a boy a cuckoo is to call him a fool, and yet the subject of Eric Parker 's talk this afternoon is far from being one. It is unsocial ; it doesn't even pair ; the hen is quite unprepared to set up housekeeping, yet assiduous in seeing that another bird shall take over the job for her.
She deposits her egg in some small nest, and that is the end of the business so far as she is concerned. The young cuckoo hatches out, and Nature has made its skin so sensitive that it cannot tolerate the pressure either of the eggs or nestlings of its foster-mother against it. It works them up on its back and throws them out. The foster-mother takes no notice of its young dead or dying outside the nest, but feeds this voracious stranger which has murdered them.
So the parasite survives, apparently designed by Nature to make use of others.