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A gifted biologist's careful and beguiling analysis of why cuckoos have got away with tricking other birds into hatching and raising their young for thousands of years. The familiar call of the normal cuckoo, "cuck-oo", is a harbinger of springtime since our ancestors walked away of Africa many thousands of years ago. However, for naturalist and scientist Nick Davies, the decision is an invitation to solve an enduring puzzle: How does the cuckoo get away with laying its eggs in the nests of other birds and tricking them into raising young cuckoos somewhat than their own offspring? Early on observers who recognized just a little warbler nourishing a monstrously large cuckoo chick concluded the cuckoo's lack of parental attention was the result of faulty design by the Inventor and that the hosts chose to help the indegent cuckoo. These quaint views of bad design and benevolence were banished after Charles Darwin proposed that the cuckoo tips the hosts in an evolutionary struggle where hosts evolve better defenses against cuckoos and cuckoos, in turn, evolve better trickery to outwit the hosts. For the last three ages, Davies has employed observation and field experiments to unravel the details of the evolutionary arms competition between cuckoos and their hosts. Like detectives, Davies and his co-workers examined adult cuckoo tendencies, cuckoo egg markings, and cuckoo-chick begging telephone calls to discover exactly how cuckoos trick their hosts. For birding and advancement aficionados, The Cuckoo is a lyrical and scientifically satisfying exploration of 1 of nature's most astonishing and beautiful adaptations.
