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A chick of the common cuckoo in the nest of a tree pipit. The naked, altricial chick hatches after 11–13 days. [2] It methodically evicts all host progeny from host nests. It is a much larger bird than its hosts, and needs to monopolize the food supplied by the parents.
A pallid cuckoo juvenile being fed by three separate foster-parent species. About 56 of the Old World species and three of the New World cuckoo species (pheasant, pavonine, and striped) are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other birds [24] and giving rise to the metaphor "cuckoo's egg". These species are obligate brood ...
A common species nest that the cuckoo will choose to place its eggs in is the reed warbler. [7] The common cuckoo distinguishes the warbler's nest and will choose what specific nest to brood in depending on the foliage and distance from the nest. [7] The common cuckoo demonstrates the egg tossing behavior when they are just hatchlings. [14]
A low percentage of parasitized nests were shown to contain cuckoo eggs not corresponding to the specific host egg morph. In these mismatched nests a high percent of the cuckoo eggs were shown to correlate to the egg morph of another host species with similar nesting sites. This has been pointed to as evidence for selection by similarity. [21]
The great spotted cuckoo (Clamator glandarius) is a member of the cuckoo order of birds, the Cuculiformes, which also includes the roadrunners, the anis and the coucals. It is widely spread throughout Africa and the Mediterranean Basin. It is a brood parasite that lays its eggs in the nests of corvids, in particular the Eurasian magpie.
The little bronze cuckoo also lays its eggs within a large time window, anytime between the morning and afternoon. This is though to make it harder for the host to anticipate the visit of a cuckoo to guard their nest against. [14] Male cuckoos also occupy a territory during the breeding season to call for females.
Cuculus cuckoos are brood parasites, that is, they lay a single egg in the nests of various passerine hosts. The best-known example is the European common cuckoo . The female cuckoo in each case replaces one of the host's eggs with one of her own.
Black-billed cuckoo preying on tent caterpillar nest. These birds forage in shrubs or trees. They mainly eat insects, especially tent caterpillars, but also some snails, eggs of other birds, and berries. [14] It is known to beat caterpillars against a branch before consuming them to remove some of the indigestible hairs.