Nick Davies (Cuckoos, Cowbirds and Other Cheats), a professor of behavioral ecology at the University of Cambridge, knows that science today is more likely to depend on DNA analysis than stomping about in a field with a notebook. However, when Davies decided to study the cuckoo bird, he knew more traditional methods were in order. For 30 years, Davies and associate Michael Brooke, curator of birds at the Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, observed wild cuckoos in a marshy area known as Wicken Fen. Now nature and nonfiction lovers can follow his discoveries in this charming, engrossing chronicle of a most unusual bird.
In the United States, the appearance of the first robin signals that spring will soon bloom, but in England, the spring comes in with the first call of the cuckoo bird. Newly returned from wintering in Africa, the cuckoos and other migratory species set about the business of reproduction, but while the other birds build their nests and raise their young, the cuckoo cheats. It lays its eggs in the nests of other species, and when the cuckoo chick hatches, it makes short work of ejecting the hosts' eggs or hatchlings. With its new only-child status, the cuckoo chick ensures that the host parents will lavish all their attention on it, and the con is complete. While humans have known about the cuckoo's parasitic behavior for thousands of years, Davies set out to solve the biggest of the mysteries surrounding this curious bird: Just how, exactly, does the cuckoo get away with it? Along the way, he works in an entertaining survey of past theories. For example, one pre-Darwin naturalist posited that host birds admired the cuckoo and felt honored to raise its offspring, reading their agitated behavior at the cuckoo's presence as jubilation.
Davies's obvious adoration for his feathered subjects can hook even the most casual of readers, whether or not experimental methodology usually grabs their attention. During his field study passersby hopefully guessed that Davies was destroying cuckoo eggs, but his musings inspire a sense of wonder at the existence of such a nuanced species, and readers will likely share his wistfulness at the decline of the British cuckoo population. Written in a series of essays, each addressing a different facet of the cuckoo's life or exploring a question about the bird's behavior, the account skillfully pulls together poetry and lore about the cuckoo, scientific theories from ancient history to modernity and Davies's own experiments and conclusions. Tidy as a woven nest and filled with genuine love for the English countryside, Davies's exposé of the bird world's trickiest customer will astound. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
Shelf Talker: Naturalist Nick Davies searches for answers to age-old questions about the parasitic cuckoo bird, one of nature's greatest curiosities.