Cuckoo is a family consisting of 140 species of individuals. The most numerous species is the cuckoo ordinary.

The appearance of these feathers will analyze on the example of ordinary cuckoo.

The length of the body varies within 35-38 centimeters. The tail is 13-18 centimeters. Weigh these feathered about 130 grams.

Wingspan of about 55 centimeters. The limbs are short and strong. Feathers on the back and tail in males Dark blue. Breasts and throat have light gray color. The rest of the body is light, has dark stripes. Feet yellow, beak dark color.

In the color of the females, brown and red shades prevail. Head and back crossed black stripes. Feathers are edged with white border. On bright chest there are well-pronounced narrow stripes of black and white. The weight of females does not exceed 110 grams.

Young, mainly, has a pale red color. The torso over the entire length crosses the darkest strips. Cuckoons are linked 2 times a year. In the summer, they change the plumage partly, and in the winter completely.

Cuckoo feeds mainly insects: wood beetles and caterpillars, which cause damage to trollers and trees leaves. In addition to insects, the diet of cucks includes eggs and chicks of other birds. His chicks and eggs that did not work out, bugs do not eat.

My males dug, and females are more silent because they always try to notice them. After all, in order to throw your eggs in other people's nests, you need to behave extremely unnoticed.

At the beginning of the spring curtains leave from Africa to Asia and Europe. Birds lead a single life. Males own large territories that can reach several hectares. The females have less extensive put on. The most important thing for cucks so that there are nests of other feathered on their territory.

Reproduction and life expectancy

One male fertilizes several cuckoo. Females do not build nests, but followed by other birds behave. Most often, cucks throw their eggs of the birds of the sparrows family, which are called singers.

Listen to the voice of cuckoo ordinary

During its existence, each mother line has adapted to other birds at the genetic level. That is why there is a color similarity of eggs. Also, eggs are difficult to distinguish in size.

The females pursue only one task - imperceptibly throwing their egg. For this, the cuckoo is waiting for the bird will fly away from the nest, and then, she quickly performs his task. For such work, the female spends 8-10 seconds. The owner's egg eats eggs, throws out of the nest or picks up.

Most often, parents do not recognize the substitution. Cuckoo chicks are born faster than the other chicks, while they are trying to get rid of master eggs. Thanks to such a strategy, the chicks often remain the only in the nest.

The kid is growing rapidly, constantly demanding food. On the third week of life, the cuckoo chick leaves the nest. But adoptive parents continue to feed the chick until he matures, it continues for about 3 weeks.

For the summer season, the female of the cuckoo has time to throw out strangers of 3-5 eggs. But the potential of these birds is very large, they can bring up to 30 eggs. If the cuckoo can not find a suitable nest, then it throws his bird or simply leaves on Earth.

Cuculus Canorus. (Linnaeus,)

Ordinary cuckoo (Lat. Cuculus Canorus.) - Middle-sized bird (body length up to 40 cm, wings - about 22 cm), with rather long (up to 18 cm) by rounded stepwise tail and long hoist wings. The cuckoo weighs about 100 g. On coloring and sizes, it resembles a hawk-carrier. Sexual dimorphism in the color is expressed well. In adult males spin and tail Dark gray, throat, goiter and breast light gray. The rest of the federation is white with dark transverse stripes. Eyes and edges of a century yellow. The beak is black, slightly bent at the top. Short legs, orange. Females, in contrast to males, or drowned on top, with ohwalous ride on the goiter, or the spinal side of the body and the top of the head of them rust-red with wide black and narrow white transverse stripes. Young birds, regardless of gender, or grayish, or reddish with more dark transverse liabilities throughout the body.

Dimensions

The males and females are approximately the same in size, but in the summer they differ in the color of the body. The length of the body of an adult bird is about 35-40 cm; Wingspan - 60 cm, live weight from 100 to 120 g. Some massiveness bird give long fly and steering feathers.

World Area

Common cuckoo is widespread. It nests in Europe and on the adjacent islands, in northwestern, tropical and South Africa, in Asia, entering places even for the northern polar circle, but is absent in the Arabian and Indogenian Peninsula and in the southern half of Indochina. Biotopes in which an ordinary cuckoo is found is extremely diverse, which is due primarily with the spread of sparrow birds, in whose nests the cuckoo is putting their eggs. The cuckoo can be found on the northern outskirts of the taiga, in the forests, in the forest-steppe, in the steppe, in a variety of thickets on the shores of standing or fluid reservoirs, in parks and gardens, in the outskirts of settlements, highly (almost up to 3000 m above sea level) in Mountains and even in the outskirts of the desert (for example in the Chui region of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan). Ordinary cuckoo on most of the bird area is flying, flying around to the tropical and southern Africa, less often in the southern regions of the Arabian Peninsula, rarely to India, Ceylon, Indochina, in the southern province of China, to the Islands of the Zonda Archipelago. Cuckoo, inhabiting tropical and southern Africa, lead a settling, partially a rumor lifestyle. Cuckoo wintering places leave in the spring very early. So, the birds, nesting in Europe, are beginning to fly away from the floors of wintering in Africa in the first numbers of March. However, they are moving towards nesting places slowly, and in the central regions of Europe, the first birds appear only at the end of April, and the gross span flying on the north of birds occurs in early May. Birds are moving in the northeast direction, flying for a day only 80 km. Only at the end of May, birds reach the northern borders of the range. Depending on the nature of the spring, the above time can be strongly shifted into the other way.

Ordinary cuckoo in the Russian Federation and CIS and Baltic countries

Main article: Cuckoo in Russia

In the marriage relationship for the cuckoo is characterized by polyging. The male cuckoo occupies a rather extensive plot, attracting females with his cries.

Notes

see also

• A deaf cuckoo - a twin type of ordinary cuckoo, common in the east of the Russian Federation.

Cuckys know everything well. And if someone did not see his own eyes (it's not so easy to see a cuckoo), I heard, visiting the forest in a spring or early summer. It is enough to hear the voice of the cuckoo to immediately understand why she was given such a name. And so the bird is called not only in Russian. Germans are called this bird "Cukuk". The French are "Cook". In Romania, she calls "Cook". In Italy - "Kuzuo". In Spanish, her name sounds "Cook", and in Turkish - "Googk".

The cuckoo is very careful: in advance of an ambush looking for a suitable socket, she chooses a moment and put his egg in him in a few seconds. Some scientists argue that simultaneously the cuckoo is withdrawn from the nest lying the egg there. But if you think about it - why do she do that? First, birds do not know how to count; Secondly, a completely different situation is in the nest: instead of several - one chick; Thirdly, Cubuschonok throws all its competitors, and he doesn't care for one more or one less. Finally, cucks are laying off their eggs not only in open sockets. And from the heap or doupel, you can not always remove someone else's egg even for purely technical reasons. By the way, in the closed nests, the cuckoo does not postpone the egg - it puts it somewhere near the earth and transfers to the nest in the beak. If still the observers saw how the cuckoo is withdrawn an egg (there is no reason to doubt their truthfulness), then it was probably dictated by some special circumstances.

There is one more opinion regarding the way of cuckoo to put eggs in other people's nests. They believe that the bird does not care, but, on the contrary, it acts very brazenly. It externally - and along the contour and in color - it looks like a hawk. Flying low above the nest, the cuckoo "Hawk" scares the birds, forces them to hide in the bushes or foliage, and herself puts the egg at that time. They say that the male helps the male in the egg laying - he scares or distracts the owners of the nest.

After throwing eggs into a few nests, one by one in each (and the eggs of the cuckoo happens 10 and 25), the cuckoo calmly goes to the wintering in South Africa (adult cucks fly very early, young - late). And the tragedies are played in the nests.

Cuckoo is hatched from the egg on a day or two before their summary brothers and sisters. This time he is enough to get used in the nest. He is still blind (the eyes of the crushes are revealed for the fifth day), even naked (but already strong enough - he will weigh three grams, and it can be twice as much). But he already had an instinct of throwing: he throws out any item to which the bare back is touched. These objects are primarily the eggs or chicks of the owners of the nest. Making them on the back - the cuckoo on the back there is even a special area for this - and helping themselves with naked wings, the crunch chick in a short time "cleans" the nest. Cubuschonok rushing - the ejection instinct acts three or four days, then subsides. If he during this time does not have time to throw away his competitors, the chicks will remain in the nest. But still they are doomed: Cubuschonok will intercept all the foods that "adoptive parents" will bring.

And "adoptive parents" seems to not notice the changes that occur in their nest. They feed the only chick with a striking diligence, although they could have understood that they were not their chick before them. The Aristotle drew attention to this amazing phenomenon. "Cuckoo is so beautiful that his breadwinners begin to hate their own children," he wrote. The real reason for such "devotion" became known regarding recently, thanks to the research of the famous Dutch scientist N.Tinenebergen. It turns out that the bright red throat and the yellow mouth of the Cubuschonka - a signal, and very powerful, forcing not only "adoptive parents" feed it, but also "outsiders" birds, which were nearby, to give food food caught for his own chicks. At the same time, no one notices or does not take into account the colossal sizes of the chick. Birdbirds sometimes sit on his back or on the head of their acceptance, fully shining their heads in his widely poured mouth.

Only a month and a half after departure from the nest of Cukuschonoko begins to conduct an independent life.

Cuckoo Mostly lay eggs in the nest of small birds. But some species throw them into the crows nests, a check box and other rather large birds. But in any case, each cuckoo specializes in certain birds - on crimsons or horikhvosts, foam or flies. And the eggs from specializing cucks are similar in shape and in color on the eggs of these birds. As for the magnitude of the eggs - and then another phenomenon. The cuckoo weighs grams of 100-120, and her egg would have weighing grams 15. And it laying the testicles weighing 3 grams, such as the bird, weighing 10-12 grams.

Once in England, an exhibition of cuckoo eggs was organized, assembled in 76 nests of different types of birds. There were 919 eggs of various colors, coloring and magnitude. But not all eggs were presented. It is known that cucks put eggs in the nest of at least 150 species of birds.

It would seem that everything is clear, cuckoo is very harmful birds, whipping chicks of many useful birds. And from here it would be possible to make the appropriate conclusion and respectively relate to these birds. But the output is still early. Let's look at it from another point of view.

First, we will not condemn the cuckoo for the fact that she is a bad mother. There are different opinions about what makes the cucks throw eggs in other people's nests. But it is undoubtedly one thing: such a cuckoo behavior is not explained by the lack of a maternal feeling, but, on the contrary, care about the preservation of his offspring. Cubuschonok cannot save his life without throwing competitors from the nest: his "adoptive parents" is not able to feed all the family - the cuckoo is very voracious. And this is this poultry insatiability (if we talk about the dangers and benefits) takes her guilt for the death of chicks of other birds. Adult cuckoo per hour can eat up to 100 caterpillars, and "work" with such intensity it can several hours in a row. And if a lot of pests appear in the forest where the cuckoo lives, it will eat them without a break until you eat it. A lot of cucks flies on the "feast", they can even fly from afar. In other words, one cuckoo destroys significantly more harmful insects (and insects more dangerous), which would be destroyed by all sculpted bird cuckoo.

But insatiability is not the only dignity of cuckoo. Among insects, especially among the caterpillars, there are those who do not eat other birds, for example, many birds do not eat "hairy" caterpillars. And the cuckoo eats, and with great pleasure. She has a stomach so that the "hair" of the caterpillars are absorbed into a special coating of the walls, and then this coating is excreted from the stomach with "hair".

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Classification

Rod: Cuckoo Ordinary (Cuculus Canorus)

Family: Cuckoo

Squad: Cuckoo-shaped

Class: Birds

A type: Chordovy

Kingdom: Animals

Dimensions: The length of the body of an adult individual is 30-35 cm, the length of the wing is 27-37 cm. Bird weight 80-100 g.

Life expectancy: 5-10 years.

Ordinary cuckoo - a bird belonging to the detachment of cuckoo. The habitat, settlement and reproduction of these birds is extremely wide and occupies almost all climatic zones from the shores of the Pacific Ocean as well as the Atlantic itself. There are cuckoo and among.

This is not a cupid bird, and in contrast to the same or, cuckoo flights often make one by one, overcoming the distance over four thousand kilometers. And, by observations of ornithologists, never delay in one place more than three to four months.

Ordinary cuckoo - far from the most colorful representative of his family, nature in other cases has endowed relative views of a brighter plumage and appearance

Habitat

Given the fact that cuckoo - birds are migrable, and the winter they prefer to spend in the tropical forests of Asia and Africa, their settlements and places numerous colonies - has long been the usual case for residents of different latitudes.

It is impossible to meet them only on the Indoostan Peninsula, in the southern part of Indochina, as well as on the Arabian Peninsula.

Many ornithologists find some kind of external similarity between the cuckoo and a small hawk - the rewriter. All over behalf of the sexual dimorphism worked - this is a minor difference in the color of the male and females.

The male genus of individuals is different with its grayish tinge of the plumage, while females are more overty and even reddish.

Interesting! Antique author and philosopher Aristotle, due to the ancient identity in his work "History of Animals" attributed a certain proportion of mysticism to the unique similarity of these two representatives of the feathers. Recalling the ancient belief, he argued that this is the same creature with the ability to reincarnate.

Really some similarity is available

Favorite and habitual habitats of cuckoo are thick deciduous forests, as it is a forest bird. But, due to the ability to adapt and evolve, these feathers can be found on any, even open and flat terrain.

Runners of suburbs, shady surroundings of reservoirs and even the outskirts of large settlements are now the natural place of residence of these forest birds. And not uncommon are photos of cuckoo in crowded places such as natural parks and green urban areas.

Representatives of Cukushkou-shaped one will be searched. Their territory of productive vital activity has strict boundaries with a radius of up to five kilometers. But this rule applies only to females, they try not to cross the conditional lines.

The males of this species often disturb the borders and move freely through the territory of different females. This type of marriage interactions is called polyging and encompasses the presence of a female individual of one male, and in a male several females. Just a bird harem.

The conditional boundaries of the personal territory with sound signals are indicated.

Interesting! The usual Ku-ku is published exclusively males, attracting individuals of female to mating. And the sounds published by females are almost indistinguishable for the human ear and remotely resemble laughing, barking, meowing or dictum.

The lifestyle of representatives of the Cukushko-shaped has long been part of the folklore and even staggering statements and analogies, as well as close attention from scientists and ornithologists around the world

Characteristic

To surprise, there are some unique species that they still have nests, surround and feed chicks, and the most amazing - they are monoga and create a couple of times and forever. In the South and Northern Continent of America, such unique types of cuis-shaped numbers are about fifty.

But, despite its attitude towards the family of birds, with the lack of parental instinct, the females take turns to survive the future offspring, or rather - shifted. For such a masonry falls at once several individuals.

Scientists consider this method not particularly effective, since some of the eggs are not based on that harms the development of the population.

Cuckoo Ani.

The yellowing cucks of the type Guury also own their own eggs, but with a shortage of nests, they can put their future offspring in the laying of representatives of their own species.

Appearance

The appearance of cucks is the most different - they differ in both color and physiological features.

Guira - married couple

Forgetful parents from the type of bronze curtains who live in Africa are also an equally unique case. Their chicks are hatched in the nests of adoptive parents, they feed them.

And when the grown young man crashes out of the nest, representatives of this kind remember their offspring and recover almost adult chicks.

California running cucks are sociable and not afraid. They calmly and confidently feel among the people. At times, even use this neighborhood.

For example: they love to fly next to passing cars, in order to employ insects entering the car action zone.

By the way, for the American population, running cuckoo symbolizes the same as the hare and is often mentioned in the local folklore

Behavior

Unlike other pennate representatives, which are kept by flocks or pairs, they buy nests, sit down and fell chicks, and also transmit all sorts of skills to their offspring and decrease, ordinary cucks are very far from such a kind of stereotypes.

These birds do not climb the nests and do not survive their crinse, and at the same time, the population does not decrease them.

And here it begins the most interesting and entertaining part of the life of cuckoo. The cuckoo female is able to postpone from ten to fifteen eggs for the year, but never raises them.

This is made by representatives of other feathered species. Often small sizes. In their nests and throws her cuckoo eggs. Their ornithologists dubbed birds - educators.

Usually, cucks are in love with the territory around the perimeter from the nest of potential receiving parents. If you get into the field of view of the females of cuckoo nests, which will be a future home for her chick, an egg begins to form a cuckoo.

She is ready to postpone it seven or eight days. The next formation of the egg begins from the moment of the finding of the next nest of the apparers suitable for it.

Representatives of different types have fallen into the list of potential teachers of Cukushat:

• white wagtail;
• slavs gray and garden;
• ordinary Gorichvostka;
• varakushka;
• meadow and black coch;
• gray flies;
• forest currency;
• zhulans Siberian and ordinary;
• forest horse;
• finch;
• nightingale redish;
• reel;
• dubrovnik.

There are birds, which in the role of educators perform less often, but also did not avoid the fate of the breadwinners.

• forest larks;
• green shift;
• beroboca Whiteguard;
• ordinary nightingaws;
• northern boat.

Nature gave a cuckoo an extraordinary similarity with predatory birds, and this external similarity is the main distracting maneuver when placing eggs into someone else's masonry. In the process, both parents are often involved.

Reproduction

Appearing near the adubted nest, the cuckoo male attracts attention to alarmed by the appearance of parents predator, lumbling them out of the nest. And at that time, the female has time to put his egg brought with him in the beak, replacing it one of the master.

At times, she just steals and throws an egg from the lured masonry, but most often - just eats. And on the entire procedure, the substitution goes no more than fifteen - twenty seconds!

But on this masking masking and the cube submenu does not end. Returning to his nest, potential teacher birds do not even detect the presence of an outsider in their laying.

And it is not surprising, as it looks very similar, and its only difference is only in a larger size.

Surprisingly the nature of the cuckoo. Certain types of representatives of this family always postpone the eggs of the same color as the birds - educators. And the randering is simple. Certain types of cuckoo and their habitat are directly related to the medium of potential receiving parents.

Cuckoo choose those types of birds whose eggs are most similar to them.

The cuckoo chick appears a little earlier than the offspring of educators. And here the genes and instincts laid by nature take their own.

Hardly time to hatch, the chick "clears" the territory and eliminates competition, throwing out or sinking the rest of the laying eggs, which, naturally, die.

And even if several chicks still appear in the nest, in which there are cousins, they risk staying hungry or die at all. Since the indicator for feeding in most birds is the yellow color of the beak. And the young cuckoo is very bright and appetite - the ignorant.

Church of the cuckoo - always the firstborn in birds

At times, the gripped chick of cuckoo significantly exceeds the sizes of its adoptive parents.

Food

All representatives of the birds of educators are small types of insectivores. Cuckoo - also insectivore birds. And especially voracious. But, this intolerance in food plays a good service to maintain balance in the natural environment.

The basic diet of cuckoo makes hairy caterpillars, both large and smaller and even poisonous, eating other representatives of the feathers.

And thus, thanks to its voraciousness, the cuckoo safely quench the dangerous foci of infection of flora with small pests. And they can afford such delicacies due to a special protective coating in the stomach, in which they are stuck, and then removal of the eaten insects.

Also in the daily menu of this type are present:

• large spiders;

Do not break the cucks to enjoy other people's eggs and all sorts of berries

Cuckoo: This Master Submathing and Disguise

Squad Cuckoo-shaped - Cuculiformes, family Cuckoo - Cuculidae,Rank Cuckoo - Cuculus.

Description of BoTurlin. Each of us since childhood is familiar to the crook of the imperceptible gray bird, this sound is "dull and simple", repeating so monotonous and nevertheless such an attractive. In the spring noise of the forest, in the ringing chorus of bird shallotes cuckoo as if woven his special musical pattern, a little sad and dreamed. This bird is more often than many others, mentioned in folk Songs, beliefs and fairy tales, her entanglements are often used in the romance and symphony composers of many nations.
"The forest is a green circle - young and sparse, and silence in the forest; And among the silence - only the voice of the cuckoo. Stunny! Remember whether to live to a new spring? "
In the old proverbs of the Russian peasantry, the cuckoo with her dyed singing was the embodiment of grief and sadness: "The cuckoo is crumbling - the mountain is doing", "does not eat cuckoo, and the wife flashes." This bird is mentioned and in other proverbs, which speaks of its great popularity: "Drown a cuckoo on the nut", "do not miss the chickens on the cuccushy eggs," "does not indulge in a cuckoo on Petrov Day", and so on.
By voice, the cuckoo is familiar to everyone, but few have seen her and know in appearance: the cuckoo is pretty carefulAnd often it fails to come closer than 50-80 meters. But there is one good tool that helps you get closer to this bird: imitating Cook, you can lift almost every screaming male. To do this, you need to learn how to shout low, thorny, but loud "oo-yu" (almost without "k"), as the cuckoo does, that for people who even have a small musical hearing, the matter is absurd.
Having walked the crock of the opponent, the cuckoo-male immediately arrives at his call, hoping to catch a female near him. Cuckoo females are less than males, so there is always a strong enmity between the latter. Light flight, the breakdown in the air is half a fan by fan, almost without stuffing wings, the cuckoo rushes between the trees, having sacrificed from the stalks of her skates. I sat on the top of the birch, raised the tail, swept the wings, throwing off his head, ponyzza's gray feathers were inflated - and the loud sleeve "Ku-ku" heard now very close to you. You cook again, after you, it is silent, then I am answering with some kind of worn "Ur-Ur ..." and with a loud laughing cry flies even closer. Now her yellow feet and a wide yellow zev, from which this strong, near the less pleasant cry is broken, is clearly visible; Gray transverse pattern on the trouser and light spots on the feathers of a light rolling tail. The cuckoo turns to the right and left, at times bends, when angry flies are flying, and dirty again without a breather. Sometimes, excited by the voice of an elusive opponent, she doubles the first syllable of a cry: "Ko-Ko-ku, ko-ku-ku ...", the yard breaks down from the tree and low swims over the bushes, then returns to the old place, and again in the trick Bor, not silent, buzzing her song. Often in the spring, passing through the forest, I managed to lead two or three cuckoo for several kilometers, melting them with a cry. But it was worth it to go away from the road with a call, a cheerful trill "Kli-Kli-Kli-Kli-Kli-Kli ...", who his senses calls the male, as my "warmed" lag behind, and I continued to walk alone.
In the middle lane of the European part of Russia cuckoo arrive At the end of April or the first days of May. First, some males appear, and after a week or two ads are joined. At the time of the arrival of males, the forest is not yet dilated, often there are cold nights - cucks are silent. But with warm weather, they begin to pour immediately by arrival. Spring hunters who are waiting for dermarias on the currents often hear the cook at night in complete darkness and predestular silence of the forest. It sounds then somehow especially solemnly and beautiful. In the midst of spring, the cuckoo shouts almost a round day - to hoarseness, longer and diligent than many forest birds sing. By the end of July, in the middle lane, the crook stops completely and resumes only for the next spring.
Cuckoo is very unpretentious in choosing summer habitats - she meet And in coniferous and in deciduous forests, in the strip of crumpled forests, in small steppe woods and ravines overgrown with bushes, high in the thoraces on the border of forests and even for reeds in the lakes, if there are a lot of reeds. For her, the features of the forest, as the abundance of insectivorous birds, which she throws their eggs is not so important. Deaf coniferous forests she avoids because there are few insectivore birds; Here it replaces the smallest deaf cuckoo.
One of the most interesting features of cuckoo biology - " nest parasitism", Lining eggs in other people's nests, in which all the concerns on making and feeding the chick are performed by the" adoptive parents ". This wonderful feature of the lives of cuckoo was already known to the ancient Greeks, but only over the past decades there are particularly valuable observations over it. Each cuckoo female occupies a certain area on which the nests of birds are looking out. At the same time, some cucks use, for example, the nests of only white waguses, others - only skates, third - swamps; Scientists believe that all cucks are divided into special "biological tribes", each of which has adapted to parasitize certain "hosts" - species of small birds. In Europe, cuckoo throw eggs with several dozen species, ranging from tiny kolologists and wipes, tapping the nightingales and striks, but from this number, all types of twenty are particularly strongly suffering from parasitism.
Egg in the cuckoo begins to ripen after it finds in the selected species of birds the nest during the construction. The egg is in the eggs of four to five days; During this time, birds manage to graduate. The cuckoo puts the egg during the day (unlike most other species), which helps her to impede the moment of lack of hosts of the nest. She puts the egg or directly into the nest, or to the ground and then transfers to a pre-seen nesting site of birds-hosts. Each cuckoo puts from 9 to 15 eggs (sometimes over 20), with quite large intervals, so that young crinse can be found in different years of summer. Eggs cuckoo, compared with its magnitude, are very small and in their sizes are approaching the eggs of birds-owners. They are very variable in color, while each female puts eggs only a certain color. One is blue, throwing them into nests with eggs of the same color, the other is gray, the third is spotted. For example, in the nest of the garden slance was found (in the Moscow region), a grayish egg of this bird with a length of 23.6 millimeters and a cuckoo gray egg - 23.3 millimeters; In the slot of the skate, three brown eggs of this species and one drowned - cuckoo specializing in parasitis at the skates. But there are often exceptions when, for example, a blue bunch of cuckoo is in the nest of a skate or slance.
Birds, feeding their chicks with grains (Dubonos, Zelenushka), the cuckoo is not disturbing, but sometimes makes that mistake that throws eggs to the tit in too narrow hollow, from where her big chick can't get out and should die.
Searches for other people's nests and throwing their eggs in them (usually, but one, less than two), all cares of female cuckoo on the offspring are limited. The germ heated zeper develops very quickly: cukuschonok It comes out of the egg in twelve and a half days of reaching, that is, a little earlier than the chicks of most of our small birds hatch. Cubuschonok overtakes in the growth of chicks of adoptive parents; In his life it is of great importance. After ten or twelve hours after hatching out of the egg, it begins to develop a special need to throw out of the nest of different items touched to the back (in the naked skin, the back of the cuckoo has many sensitive nerve endings). The warm egg will fall on the back, in which the church is already moving, - the cuckoo places him into the groove on the sacrum and, holding the wings, will lie down to the edge of the nest. Here, lifting on the legs, resting his head into the nest, naked, blind robber throws the egg to the ground with a sharp jerk. So it comes with small chicks. For the first three or four days of life, when the Cubuschonka is expressed by this reflex, the chick-maker has time to throw out of the nest of all 5-10 eggs or chicks of its owners. Small poultry chicks are fed only in the nest, so all the thrown out of the young dying.
If the cuckoo put an egg in the nest with a raised masonry and cuckoo slightly stretch in growth, most of the chicks or the entire brood remains safe. Parents worth a lot of work to feed such a family.
Cookuccoon remains in the nest of about twenty days. At first he is completely silent, it is later beginning to squeeze loudly, continuously demanding feed. He is sick and after departure from the nest, two or three weeks using the works of adoptive parents. It is strange to see a big, in a reddish plumage, well flying cuckoo, near which tirelessly cotton two tiny foams or flies. Cubuschonokom is several times more than their growth, he spakes such a wide mouth that it seems, is about to swallow the bird along with the caterpillars. The poor foam is difficult to reach the beak to a wide phase of his insatiable pet, "he is so surpassed by height. Sometimes it can be seen how the bird sits out a cuckoo on the shoulders and the feed hurry hurry him, hurrying for new prey.
The burning of the growing cuckoo is very large. There is a known case when the young bird of this species, signed in the cage, ate the day 18 lizards, 39 large green grasshoppers, 3 pupae butterfly "dead head", 43 cabbage caterpillars, 5 larvae of the May beetle, 4 spiders-crushes, 50 flour worms and Considerable amount of ant "eggs".