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long birds are difficult to see for they skulk about in a furtive manner, as if they have a guilty secret.
If I am to apply human standards and values to a bird, I would write that the European cuckoo does have a guilty secret. The bird is a brood parasite as is our brown-headed cowbird. The female lays her egg in another bird’s nest and leaves incubation and rearing of her young to the host.
The European cuckoo lays an egg of the same color and markings as the bird being parasitized. The size will naturally vary. What evolutionary magic is this? The hatchling cuckoo pushes his step-brothers and sisters out of the nest with the result that he or she gets all food and attention of the nest builder.
New World cuckoos — those that nest in Virginia — are only parasitic in that they lay eggs in each other’s nests.
Rarely do they parasitize other species such as cardinals, catbirds, robins and wood thrushes. Their unspotted eggs are a curious bluishgreen color, difficult to describe if one is to take ornithological literature seriously. I do.
I wonder what this semiparasitic behavior of eastern cuckoos means in the study of the evolution of the brood par
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