84. CUCKOO. _Cuculus canorus_, Linnaeus. French, "Coucou gris."--The Cuckoo is one of the commonest and most numerous summer visitants to the Islands, and is generally spread over all of them; it arrives about the same time that it does in England, that is to say, about the middle of April. I know earlier instances--even as early as February--have been recorded, but these must have been recorded in consequence of some mistake, probably some particularly successful imitation of the note. Mr. MacCulloch seems to think that the time of their arrival is very regular, as he writes to me to say, "The Cuckoo generally arrives here about the 15th of April; sometimes as early as the 13th, as was the case this year (1878); the first are generally reported from the cliffs at St. Martin's, near Moulin Huet, the first land they would make on their arrival from Brittany." Very soon after their arrival, however, they spread over the whole Island of Guernsey, as well as all the other neighbouring islands, in all of which they are equally plentiful; they seem to cross from one to the other without much considering four or five miles of sea, or being the least particular as to taking the shortest passage across from island to island. As usual, there were a great number of Cuckoos in the Vale whilst I was there this summer (1878); but I was unfortunate in not finding eggs, and in not seeing any of the foster-parents feeding their over-grown _protégés_: this was rather surprising, as there were so many Cuckoos about, and many must have been hatched and out of the nest long before we left at the end of July. I should think, however, Tree and Meadow Pipits, Skylarks and Stonechats, from their numbers and the numbers of their nests, must be the foster-parents most usually selected; other favourites, such as Wagtails, Hedgesparrows, and Robins, being comparatively scarce in that part of the Island, and Wheaters, which were numerous, had their nests too far under large stones to give the Cuckoo an opportunity of depositing her eggs there. I should have been very glad if I could have made a good collection of Cuckoos' eggs in the Channel Islands, and, knowing how common the bird was, I fully expected to do so, but I was disappointed, and consequently unable to throw any light on the subject of the variation in the colour of Cuckoos' eggs, as far as the Channel Islands are concerned, or how far the foster-parents had been selected with a view to their eggs being similar in colour to those of the Cuckoo about to be palmed off upon them. The only Cuckoos' eggs I saw were a few in the Museum, and in one or two other small collections: all these were very much the same, and what appears to me the usual type of Cuckoo's egg, a dull greyish ground much spotted with brown, and a few small black marks much like many eggs of the Tree or Meadow Pipit. It is hardly the place here to discuss the question how far Cuckoos select the