Distracting..

Day 328 #365DaysWild

A cuckoo is calling as I awake. Close by. No better alarm.

I dress and am outside. 

He’s perched on a wire in the field. Horizontal in posture, falcon-like in profile.

Robins are parasitised by cuckoos

The classic parasite. Cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds which rear their young as their own.

His call alerts other males to his presence. And females too. They’re bigger and striated brown with a bubbling call.

But on in the wire now his calls attract a gathering of meadow pipits. They’re not appreciative.

Calling male cuckoos are believed to distract their host birds away from their nests allowing the female cuckoo to lay her egg in the unprotected nest.