We are just finishing up the documentary series Life of Birds, created and presented by David Attenborough, a charming old British dude with a comb-over and a windbreaker, and one of the best nature documentarists ever. He’ll be sweating in the Sahara in one frame and walking through the English countryside in the next. He sits down in the mud and climbs trees and sneaks up on large animals even though he is eighty years old. Though he is interesting, he is not so interesting as the animals he introduces, such as the cuckoo bird. Apparently this is common knowledge, but it is a parasite bird that waits for a smaller bird to leave its nest. Then it sneaks over, eat one or two of the eggs, and replace them with its own slightly larger egg. The unsuspecting mother bird will incubate the cuckoo egg along with her own. As soon as it hatches, while it is still a blind pink embryonic thing, it systematically pushes all the other eggs out of the nest. Still, the host bird cares for it and feeds it to adulthood. It’s song sounds like that of a hungry brood, and she feels compelled to feed it though it is larger than her, in fact so large it doesn’t even fit in the nest. Craziness!


photo still from pbs.com
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photo still from peacockshock.com