In April, I listened with pleasure to the Taku Winds’ performance of Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. One of the “pictures” illustrated in music is called (in English) the Ballet of the ...

A lot of us will change our wardrobe to fit into a crowd, and the brood parasite known as the cuckoo has used evolution to do the same thing. Because cuckoos lay their eggs in the nest of a host bird, ...

For the first time, scientists have found a bird species–Australia’s superb fairy-wren–that can spot a murderer. The killers are chicks of a particularly aggressive cuckoo species. The crime begins ...

Cuckoos are some of nature’s most practiced—and successful—con artists. Many species from this large family of birds are brood parasites. They lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and outsource ...

The great spotted cuckoo is a parasitic bird that plops its eggs in nests of other birds, so others can care for its chicks. Those chicks might... This Freeloading Bird Brings Help — And The Help ...

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. How do new species arise? And why are there so many of them? One possible ...

Foster families The greater the cost of raising a cuckoo chick, the more likely a host bird is to kick cuckoo eggs out of the nest before they hatch, Australian researchers have found. Brood ...

Just ask 11-year-old Clara Fondow about her 4H chickens, then sit back and enjoy a whole lot of information about them in a very short time. First there’s Ginger, a golden cuckoo marans chick. Helen ...

Bronzed cowbirds often lay their eggs in other birds’ nest. Brood parasites are some of the bird kingdom’s most notorious sneaks. They don’t rear their own young but instead pawn the task of child ...

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 ...