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 ...

Does a cuckoo know it's a cuckoo? The answer is more difficult than you might think, explains Richard Pallardy ...

Most birds spend hours, days, or even weeks painstakingly building their nests. Some birds make nests out of mud, some build nests in trees, and some birds nest on the ground and simply scrape out a ...

Discover the cunning parenting techniques of cuckoos. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Cuckoos are masters of deception. When it ...

Common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) in flight. This is an adult male: Grey morph adult females have a pinkish-buff or buff background to the barring and the sides of the neck, and sometimes small rufous ...

For two million years African cuckoo finches have been tricking other birds into raising their young by mimicking the colour of their eggs, but new research suggests the tables may be turning in this ...

Nest building is costly. It requires time, energy, and constant defence from predators. For birds that raise their own young, this investment makes sense because it ensures survival of their chicks.

JOHNSTON — The common cuckoo is such a rare sight in this part of the world that it doesn’t show up in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s guide to birds in North America. The Audubon Society’s handbook ...

Birders are going cuckoo for a rare sight on Long Island. The common cuckoo bird has been spotted only four times in U.S. history in the lower 48 states, experts say. Now, it's in Riverhead. Hundreds ...