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Summary
Summary
The familiar call of the common cuckoo, "cuck-oo," has been a harbinger of spring ever since our ancestors walked out of Africa many thousands of years ago. However, for naturalist and scientist Nick Davies, the call is an invitation to solve an enduring puzzle: how does the cuckoo get away with laying its eggs in the nests of other birds and tricking them into raising young cuckoos rather than their own offspring?
Early observers who noticed a little warbler feeding a monstrously large cuckoo chick concluded the cuckoo's lack of parental care was the result of faulty design by the Creator, and that the hosts chose to help the poor cuckoo. These quaint views of bad design and benevolence were banished after Charles Darwin proposed that the cuckoo tricks the hosts in an evolutionary battle, where hosts evolve better defenses against cuckoos and cuckoos, in turn, evolve better trickery to outwit the hosts.
For the last three decades, Davies has employed observation and field experiments to unravel the details of this evolutionary "arms race" between cuckoos and their hosts. Like a detective, Davies and his colleagues studied adult cuckoo behavior, cuckoo egg markings, and cuckoo chick begging calls to discover exactly how cuckoos trick their hosts. For birding and evolution aficionados, Cuckoo is a lyrical and scientifically satisfying exploration of one of nature's most astonishing and beautiful adaptations.
Author Notes
Nicholas Davies was born on March 28, 1953. He is a British investigative journalist, writer and documentary maker. He has written extensively as a freelancer, as well as for The Guardian and The Observer, and been named Reporter of the Year, Journalist of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards. Davies has made documentaries for ITV's World in Action and written numerous books on the subject of politics and journalism, including Flat Earth News, which attracted considerable controversy as an exposé of journalistic malpractice in the UK and around the globe. As a reporter for The Guardian, Davies was responsible for uncovering the News of the World phone hacking affair, including the July 2011 revelations of hacking into the mobile phone voicemail of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.He will be at the WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival in 2015. His title Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught up with Rupert Murdoch made the New Zealand Best Seller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
British field ornithologist Davies (Cuckoos, Cowbirds, and other Cheats) dials into the parasitic behavior of Britain's favorite harbinger of spring, the cuckoo, as he details the "evolutionary arms race" between cuckoos and their hosts, which yields adaptations and behavior that seem exquisitely well-tuned, but sometimes incomprehensibly sloppy. He walks readers through Wicken Fen, his fieldwork site for more than 30 years, carefully observing the clever manipulations of cuckoos and their targets: reed warblers, wagtails, meadow pipits, and dunnocks. With meticulously designed experiments, Davies discovered the intricacies of egg mimicry, part of an "egg arms race between cuckoos and hosts." He explains some of the more complex host behaviors within a Darwinian framework, addressing the cost-benefit assessments that host parents must make to determine if they should remove a dubious egg, attack a potentially predatory nest invader that could just be a cuckoo mimic, or feed a hyperstimulated cuckoo chick that is mimicking the sounds of the host brood. Davies's bird story is satisfying not only for his strong conclusions and well-maintained focus, but because it also highlights the value of scientific observation. B&w illus., color insert. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Are cuckoos the avian model of bad parents? Many cuckoo species lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and fly away. Hatched cuckoo chicks then usually push the host's eggs and chicks out of the nest. Might cuckoos actually be very successful parents, having carefully chosen foster parents who raise more cuckoo chicks than they could if they kept their own nests? Do the foster parents have any defenses against this deception? Behavioral ecologist Davies of the University of Cambridge has spent more than three decades in the fens near his college trying to answer these and other questions about cuckoos and the birds they victimize. He describes experiments involving recorded bird calls, radio transmitters, and egg substitutions, and he reports findings that suggest how predators and prey continue to adapt. Readers may gain some respect, if not affection, for a hard-to-understand bird.--Roche, Rick Copyright 2015 Booklist
Choice Review
Bird lovers have marveled for centuries at how cuckoos trick other bird species into raising cuckoo eggs and nestlings. For several decades, bird expert Davies (Univ. of Cambridge, UK) has observed birds at Wicken Fen, one of Britain's oldest nature reserves, devising clever experiments with his team to discover the behavioral triggers for both reed warblers and the cuckoos who attempt to hijack their parenting skills. Over time, the two species have evolved new strategies. Using model birds, tiny sound transmitters, and carefully painted model eggs, Davies has made some unexpected findings and produced an absorbing account of this battle of bird behavior. Recently, this absorbing analysis has acquired new urgency: fewer cuckoos have been returning from their annual migration to Africa. They are also arriving later--to find that several host species have already fledged. Davies's conclusions may figure into strategies to stabilize the cuckoo's presence, noted in European literature for centuries as a brilliant villain and harbinger of spring. James MacCallum's accompanying pencil and watercolor sketches vividly evoke the fens of East Anglia and their ever-watchful bird denizens. In sum, this new volume by Davies conveys good science with ingenuity and charm, and is certain to please a wide audience. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Keir B. Sterling, formerly, Pace University
Guardian Review
Nick Davies has spent a lifetime studying this most infamous of birds, and he supplies history and science of the highest order The incessant, two-note call of the cuckoo, insinuating its way into the April air from dawn to dusk, has been celebrated across Britain and Europe for centuries as a sign that summer is just around the corner. The cuckoo appeared in Chaucer and Shakespeare, and first sightings of it are traditionally recorded on the letters page of the Times newspaper. Its arrival lifts the heart of every birder -- and anyone else who hears it -- each year. And yet the cuckoo is also, as Nick Davies points out, a forger, a killer and a cheat. Famously -- and uniquely among British birds -- it lays its eggs in other birds' nests, allowing them to do the hard work of raising the monstrous cuckoo offspring, after it has cast their own eggs or chicks aside. It is a story that has been told many times before, in books, TV programmes and in one of the earliest nature films ever made, by ornithologist and businessman Edgar Chance. But Davies, a professor of behavioural ecology at Cambridge, illuminates it anew after his lifetime's experience watching, studying and questioning the lifecycle of the cuckoo at his beloved Wicken Fen, near Cambridge. He answers questions that have mystified generations of ornithologists, ever since Aristotle first noted that the cuckoo "lays its eggs in the nests of smaller birds after devouring these birds' eggs". He even ventures to ask questions that have never occurred to anyone before, and answer them, too, and to do all this with a quiet charm and infinite patience. Although it may be fashionable to denigrate field studies, now that science has made so many advances in the laboratory, this book is living proof that careful observation, allied to an enquiring mind, can achieve groundbreaking results. It is no accident that Davies's heroes, often cited in these pages, are William Turner, Charles Darwin and the aforementioned Chance. These men dedicated their lives to discovering what birds actually do (rather than what we might think they do), allowing them to overturn conventional wisdom and correct errors. During the course of this book, Davies leads us on parallel journeys through the history of our knowledge of the cuckoo, its own natural history, and a series of ingenious experiments carried out by him and his colleagues to test their hypotheses. This is science of the highest order; but more importantly still, it has been rendered into clear, readable prose, which non-scientists such as myself can easily understand. Beautiful illustrations by the talented Norfolk artist James McCallum add to the book's appeal. Davies's enthusiasm is utterly infectious. As he leads us through his journey of discovery, we learn that cuckoos and their hosts are engaged in an "arms race", each constantly developing new ways of fooling the other. Some do so more efficiently than others: although cuckoos mimic their hosts' eggs in colour and pattern (or "signature", as Davies calls it), the dunnock bizarrely accepts streaked greyish-brown eggs that stand out like a sore thumb among its sky-blue clutch. Meanwhile in Africa, in a scene worthy of any horror film, newly hatched honeyguides (like the cuckoo, a parasitic species) stab baby bee-eaters to death in the darkness of their nest-holes. In some of my favourite passages, Davies evokes the subtle beauty of Wicken Fen, a remnant of the vast wetlands that once covered much of East Anglia. His prose ranks among the best nature writing, fuelled by a lifetime's passion for this place and one compelling species of bird. As you might expect, there is an elegiac feel to the closing chapters. Cuckoos are declining in much of Britain, and we still don't know exactly why -- though, inevitably, the way we manage the countryside, to the detriment of the insects the cuckoo chicks need to survive, is high on the list of likely causes. In 2012, not a single cuckoo chick was raised on Wicken Fen, the first time this has occurred in the 30 years that Davies has studied them there; and, as he speculates, probably the first time for centuries. It would be easy to lose hope, but the book ends with a marvellous description of the fenland restoration currently being carried out in the area -- a landscape-scale project that has already brought back bitterns, bearded tits and cranes, and which may yet prove to be the salvation of the cuckoo. Davies writes: "Meanwhile, in a week or so, my reed warblers will drop from the night skies to this little patch of fen. My hope is that some cuckoos will follow them, to thrill naturalists once more with their curious breeding habits, and as harbingers of a new spring." Readers will share his hope, and await, with renewed enthusiasm, the cuckoo's return. * Stephen Moss's latest book, co-authored with Brett Westwood, is Tweet of the Day (Saltyard). To order Cuckoo for [pound]13.59 (RRP [pound]16.99) visit bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over [pound]10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of [pound]1.99. - Stephen Moss
Kirkus Review
Davies (Behavioral Ecology/Univ. of Cambridge; Cambridge Cuckoos, Cowbirds and Other Cheats, 2000, etc.) chronicles his 30-year attempt to solve what he calls "an enduring puzzle: how does the cuckoo get away with such outrageous behavior?"During his years at Cambridge as a student and a faculty member, the author became fascinated by the cuckoos that frequented a nearby wetland during nesting season. This is an account of his and his collaborators' efforts to solve the mystery. Davies' special interest as an ornithologist has been to try to understand how they were able to trick the unwitting host species into accepting foreign eggsparticularly after the fledgling cuckoo emerged from his egg and set about to ruthlessly destroy the host's remaining eggs. One of their earliest discoveries was that the eggs laid by different subspecies of European cuckoos have evolved to closely mimic those of different host species (warblers, pipits and wagtails) in size, color and markings. Not only do they foist their eggs on other species; they also ruthlessly destroy the host eggs to make a place for their own. A female cuckoo will time her egg-laying to that of the host female, removing a host egg and replacing it with her own. The faster-maturing cuckoo will hatch first and destroy nest mates that are potential rivals and then mimic their calls begging to be fed. Relieved of parenting duties, the adult cuckoos conserve energy for an early return to their winter habitat. While host birds do attempt to destroy the intruder's eggs, they are confused due to the variability of their own eggs. A battle for survival ensues between the aggressor cuckoos and the defending hosts, involving genetic and behavioral shifts. "My hope is that this reads like a nature detective story," writes Davies. He has achieved his goal and more in this fascinating study of "an evolutionary arms race." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Starred Review. Davies (behavioral ecology, Cambridge Univ.; Cuckoos, Cowbirds and Other Cheats) presents a labor of love three decades in the making. His subject: the common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), a bird of large cultural importance and fascinating habits. His laboratory: Wicken Fen, one of Britain's oldest nature preserves. The author fancies his book as a kind of nature detective story, one in which the mystery to be unraveled involves avian brood parasitism. Cuckoos lay their eggs in others' nests, freeing themselves from the rigors of raising chicks. What transpires is a dramatic coevolutionary "arms-race," wherein the host birds (in this case usually reed warblers) evolve various defenses against the trickery and the parasites evolve ever more ingenious (and ruthless) means of exploitation. Davies recounts many field experiments seeking not just the "how" but also the "why" behind cuckoo (and host) behavior. He tips his hat often to amateur investigators and researchers both past and present. As so many contemporary accounts of avian life do, the book ends with an alarming note about declining cuckoo populations. VERDICT This is highly literate, beautifully written natural history-where the big ideas presented (e.g., evolution, natural selection) will engage amateur and expert readers alike.-Robert Eagan, Windsor P.L., Ont. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.