Cuckoo Theology
Richard Kew+

I am not a fanatical birder, but have spent most of my life watching birds, enjoying them, and learning their habits. The other evening as cliques of swallows swooped and dived over me as I took our dog on his evening walk around the neighboring field, I realized that they will soon be gathering on the power lines and beginning their journey southward to warmer climes.

Thoughts of their migration got me thinking about the Cuckoo, a bird that is almost a national institution in Britain, the first of which will already have started for the warmer south.The Cuckoo is Britain's only parasitic bird. It arrives in April from its wintering grounds in North Africa, and it is the male bird's cry of "cuckoo" that is so distinctive and is said to be the sign that spring has begun. Once a breeding pair have established a territory, the female will scout out the other species of bird that are nesting there and when there is a clutch of eggs in a nest she will come along, remove one of them, and replace it with one of her own that mimics in color and size the eggs that are already there. She will do this with as many as adozen nests in her territory.

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