Chapter VII

1. The cuckoo is said by some persons to be a changed hawk, because the hawk which it resembles disappears when the cuckoo comes, and indeed very few hawks of any sort can be seen during the period in which the cuckoo is singing except for a few days. The cuckoo is seen for a short time in the summer, and disappears in winter. But the hawk has crooked talons, which the cuckoo has not, nor does it resemble the hawk in the form of its head, but in both these respects is more like the pigeon than the hawk, which it resembles in nothing but its colour; the markings, however, upon the hawk are like lines, while the cuckoo is spotted.

2. Its size and manner of flight is like that of the smallest kind of hawk, which generally disappears during the season in which the cuckoo is seen. But they have both been seen at the same time, and the cuckoo was being devoured by the hawk, though this is never done by birds of the same kind. They say that no one has ever seen the young of the cuckoo. It does, however, lay eggs, but it makes no nest; but sometimes it lays its eggs in the nests of small birds, and devours their eggs, especially in the nests of the pigeon, when it has eaten their eggs. Sometimes it lays two, but usually only one egg; it lays also in the nest of the hypolais,[201] which hatches and brings it up. At this season it is particularly fat and sweet-fleshed; the flesh also of young hawks is very sweet and fat. There is also a kind of them which builds a nest in precipitous cliffs.

[201] Sylvia curucca, hedge sparrow.

CHAPTER VIII.

1. In many birds the male alternates with the female in the duty of incubation, as we observed in speaking of pigeons, and takes her place while she is obliged to procure food for herself. In geese the female alone sits upon the eggs, and having once begun, she never leaves them during the whole process of incubation. The nests of all water birds are situated in marshy and grassy places, by which means they can keep quiet and still have food within their reach, so that they do not starve all the while. The females alone, among the crows, sit on the eggs, which they never leave; but the males bring them food and feed them.

2. The females of the pigeons begin to sit at twilight, and remain on the nest the whole night, till dawn; and the male the rest of the time. Partridges make two nests of eggs, upon one of which the male sits, on the other the female; and each of them hatches and brings up its own: and the male has sexual intercourse with its young as soon as they are hatched.