Does a cuckoo know it's a cuckoo? The answer is more difficult than you might think, explains Richard Pallardy ...

This story appears in the January 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine. For the care and feeding of its offspring, the common cuckoo outsources. When she’s ready to lay an egg, a female Cuculus ...

Nest building is costly. It requires time, energy, and constant defence from predators. For birds that raise their own young, this investment makes sense because it ensures survival of their chicks.

Most birds spend hours, days, or even weeks painstakingly building their nests. Some birds make nests out of mud, some build nests in trees, and some birds nest on the ground and simply scrape out a ...

JOHNSTON, R.I. (WPRI) ─ Rhode Islanders have a new, yet positive, reason to go a little “cuckoo” this year. Hundreds of people have been flocking to Snake Den State Park in Johnston to get a glimpse ...

There are plenty of birds that are widely referenced in popular culture today, whether as a sports team name or as the origin for an ubiquitous turn of phrase—looking at you, ugly duckling. But few ...

Discover the cunning parenting techniques of cuckoos. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Cuckoos are masters of deception. When it ...

Common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) in flight. This is an adult male: Grey morph adult females have a pinkish-buff or buff background to the barring and the sides of the neck, and sometimes small rufous ...

To someone watching birds casually, the cuckoo’s behaviour looks almost lazy. Instead of gathering twigs, lining a nest, and feeding its chicks, the cuckoo quietly slips its egg into another bird’s ...