Brood Parasitism

[lampetia]

Birds are well known for their parental care, patiently incubating their eggs and then bringing food to their young until they are old enough to look after themselves. However, certain birds, known as "brood parasites," lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and do not provide any parental care for their own offspring. Care that the "hosts"

Comments

[singsonggirl]

I can just imagine that poor little momma bird looking at her HUGELY GIANT BABY and going, "seriously, wtf?"

[lampetia]

I watched a documentary on it a long time ago. I thought I remembered hearing something about the warbler rejecting the cuckoo egg and getting her nest torn apart as a result. What douchebags cuckoos are!

[kitchenwitch]

She's probably very defensive when it comes to others' criticism. "He has a GLANDULAR PROBLEM!"

[spencer_mato]

So, they're the crackwhores and teenage mothers of the animal world?

[lampetia]

Yeah, but instead of dumping their kids off on their parents or in a dumpster.. they break into someone else's house and leave it in their crib.

[eirawyn]

lmfao

[lupie_stardust]

She must just think she's done a really good job of feeding it!

[xhorrorx]

LOL

[pikku_gen]

When I was a kid, there was a Common Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus) making a nest in a nest box near my house. A cuckoo visited it. The tragedy was, the flying hole of the nest box was quite small, and the baby cuckoo couldn't get out once grown. The redstart parents finally gave up and left, and the cuckoo was left inside starving.

No pictorial evidence, sorry - this was a long time ago and we didn't have a camera at the time. Besides the nest box was some four metres up a tree so the cats couldn't get to it.

[lampetia]

I believe you.

I'm a gullible LJer. =D

[pikku_gen]

Hearing the little cuckoo screaming its hunger near the end was something horrible, but there was nothing anyone could do. Later there was an infestation of ants who climbed up the tree and presumably ate up the carcass, because when the nest box was cleaned up there was just a pile of neat little white bones. I am eternally bitter my mother didn't let me take some of the bones - especially the wing-bones were fascinating.

[lampetia]

I was the same way as a kid.

I pulled the head off a dead bird, plucked it, peeled the flesh off and bleached it for two days before giving it to my science teacher as a gift.

[kitchenwitch]

Dang, cuckoos are jerks!!

But on the other hand, reed warblers have bird brains. I mean, "This suggests that they would benefit from watching out for cuckoos."? Umm... yeah. That might help.