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Common Cuckoo

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Birds

                  iCommon Cuckoo

                             Conservation status

   Least Concern (LC)
            Scientific classification

   Kingdom: Animalia
   Phylum:  Chordata
   Class:   Aves
   Order:   Cuculiformes
   Family:  Cuculidae
   Genus:   Cuculus
   Species: C. canorus

                                Binomial name

   Cuculus canorus
   (Linnaeus, 1758)

   The Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) is a member of the cuckoo order of
   birds, the Cuculiformes, which also includes the roadrunners, the anis,
   the coucals, and the Hoatzin.

   The cuckoo group gets its English and scientific names from the call of
   the male Common Cuckoo, usually given from an open perch, goo-ko. The
   female has a loud bubbling call.

   The cuckoo is a widespead summer migrant to Europe and western Asia,
   and winters in Africa. It is a brood parasite, which lays its eggs in
   the nests of other bird species, particularly of Dunnocks, Meadow
   Pipits, and Reed Warblers.

   This cuckoo is a greyish bird with a slender body, long tail and strong
   legs. The females only are sometimes brown, the “hepatic” phase. It
   looks like a small bird of prey in flight, although the wings stay
   below the horizontal. Its food is insects, with hairy caterpillars,
   which are distasteful to many birds, being a speciality. It is a bird
   of open land.

Brood parasite behaviour

   Reed warbler feeding a common cuckoo chick
   Enlarge
   Reed warbler feeding a common cuckoo chick
   Common Cuckoo
   Enlarge
   Common Cuckoo

   An ideal breeding habitat for Cuckoos is where there are reed beds and
   trees. An individual female Cuckoo's territory will contain up to about
   20 Reed Warbler's nests. Female Cuckoos spend a long time watching over
   the reed beds in their territory from the trees, and watch the
   behaviour of the Reed Warblers as they build their nests and start
   their broods. The female Cuckoo has to time her egg laying to just when
   the reed warblers start to lay eggs. It is not known how the hen cuckoo
   gets the timing right, as she cannot see the Reed Warblers' eggs from
   the trees, but it is likely that is it from the behaviour of warblers.

   At the appropriate moment the hen Cuckoo flies down to the reed
   warblers' nest, pushes one Reed Warbler egg out of the nest, lays an
   egg and flies off. The whole process is achieved in only about 10
   seconds. At 14 days old, the Cuckoo chicks are about 3 times the size
   of the adult Reed Warblers. The numerous and rapid hunger calls of the
   single cuckoo chick, and to a lesser extent its coloured gape,
   encourage the host parents to bring more food. Cuckoo chicks fledge
   after about 20 -21 days after hatching, which is about twice as long as
   for Reed Warblers. If the hen cuckoo is out-of-phase with a clutch of
   Reed Warbler eggs, she will eat them all so that the hosts are forced
   to start another brood.

   The Cuckoo chick methodically evicts all other young from the nest. It
   is a much larger bird than its hosts, and needs to monopolise the food
   supplied by the parents. The Cuckoo chick will roll the other eggs out
   of the nest by pushing them with its back over the edge. If the Reed
   Warbler's eggs hatch before the Cuckoo's egg, the Cuckoo chick will
   push the other chicks out of the nest in a similar way. Once the Reed
   Warbler chicks are out of the nest, the parents completely ignore them.

   The combination of behaviour and anatomical adaptation of the common
   cuckoo was first described by Edward Jenner, who was elected as Fellow
   of the Royal Society in 1788 for this work. This was well before he
   invented vaccination.

Egg colour

   Female Cuckoos are divided into gentes, that is populations favouring a
   particular host species' nest and laying eggs which match those of that
   species in colour and pattern. The colour pattern is inherited from the
   female only, suggesting that it is carried on the sex-determining W
   chromosome (females are WZ, males ZZ). It is notable that most
   non-parasitic cuckoos lay white eggs, like most non-passerines other
   than ground nesters. The exception is in the case of the Dunnock, where
   the Cuckoo's egg has no resemblance to its hosts' blue eggs. This is
   thought to be because the Dunnock is a recent host, and has not yet
   acquired the ability to distinguish eggs. Male Cuckoos breed with
   females without regard to gens. This results in gene flow between the
   gentes and maintains a common gene pool for the species (except for the
   genes on the W chromosome).

Trivia

     * In England, hearing the call of the Cuckoo is regarded as the first
       harbinger of spring, and The Times newspaper notoriously features
       correspondence every year reporting the first calls.
     * In Russia, there's a popular belief that a cuckoo can predict how
       many more years a person will live. If a person hears a cuckoo in
       the woods, he or she usually asks "Cuckoo, cuckoo, how long will I
       live?". It is believed that a person will live as many years as a
       cuckoo cuckooed.
     * The word " cuckold" derives from the Cuckoo's practice of tricking
       other birds into raising its young.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Cuckoo"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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