The eggs are brown, like the bird itself, which is so beautiful
in its song--that lovely song which you can hear even when you can hardly
see the tiny singer.
"Far in the downy cloud,"
or but a speck in the deep blue; for the lark will
"Soar up and up, quivering for very joy,"
singing all the time, till he is out of sight--yet never forget that low
spot, hidden with grass, where his nest is.
You know why it is said that "the cuckoo builds no nest at all," don't you?
May has a verse which calls him "a most conceited bird," because from the
time when he comes back from Africa we hear him constantly calling his own
name, 'coo-coo, coo-coo!' Still, I don't think the cuckoo should be called
"conceited" when it is we who have given it its name from the call which
is natural to it; but it is a most unfaithful bird, and leaves its little
ones to be brought up by others, not taking the trouble to build a cradle
for them, nor will the mother sit upon her eggs. I used to think the
reason why we saw so few cuckoos was because this bird laid only one egg;
but I have read that she lays eight, each one in the nest of some bird
much smaller than herself. The cuckoo is grey, and about the size of a
blackbird; but her eggs are small, not bigger than a hedge-sparrow's or a
lark's. She lays her egg on the ground, and then lifts it with her bill
into the nest which she has chosen. The stranger bird is hatched first, and
always behaves as if the whole nest belonged to him.
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