eath the gables of the old mansion, and the distant
trickling of water made a soft accompaniment to these varied sounds.

One afternoon when the Blackbird was thus perched on his favourite
fir-branch he saw the old Rook sailing slowly by. He had not seen his
old friend for some time, so he gladly welcomed and joined him. Away
they flew to a copse beyond the lake where hazels and alders grew. A
bright, pebbly stream wound through this copse, babbling cheerily as it
went, and both birds alighted on an overhanging bough to watch the tiny
fish as they poised and darted backwards and forwards. At a bend of the
stream a little higher up, a brilliant-hued kingfisher was on the watch,
and another bird of much soberer plumage was perched on a hazel bough
beyond. He had yellow legs, a long tail, and ashen-coloured plumage
spotted with white, which attracted the Blackbird's attention, for he
did not remember ever to have seen him before.

"Do you know that bird?" inquired the Blackbird, nodding in the
direction of the stranger.

"Indeed I do," replied the Rook, dryly; "but he's no friend of mine I
assure you. He's one of the laziest and most unprincipled of creatures.
He has only one good point about him, that's his note, and you must know
that well. His 'twofold shout' of _cuckoo_ is a welcome sound to every
one, for it tells us that Spring is here. As I said, however, that is
his only good point,--for, can you believe it? _he never builds a
nest!_"

"Never builds a nest!" exclaimed the Blackbird in astonishment, "then
where does he lay his eggs?"

"Why," said the Rook, "the cuckoos have the impudence, the audacity, to
drop them in the nest of some other bird, any nest that takes their
fancy. And that is not all. Not only does the cuckoo lay its egg in a
stranger's nest, but the unfortunate bird whose nest he has chosen has
not only to sit on his egg, and hatch his great gawkey young one, but
has also to feed it, and rear it till it can take care of itself. Nice
job it is too," said the Rook with disgust. "Then they are so
knowing--ay, they're clever birds! Why they never lay their eggs in the
nests of any of the Finches, because they are seed-feeding birds, and
the cuckoos know full well that their young ones would starve, because a
seed-feeding bird wouldn't be able to rear them. Therefore they always
choose the nests of the insect-feeding birds, and they never make a
mistake. I wish they would sometimes, then there would