Dear Birders
There's an excellent book on cuckoo studies in the UK that covers the
Common Cuckoo behaviour in great detail - /Cuckoo, Chating by Nature /by
Nick Davies, publishers Bloomsbury Paperbacks. He and his team found
male and female UK cuckoos do have exclusive territories although males
like to mate with as many females as possible. It's a fascinating study.
Interesting is that Australian cuckoos have been evolving for much
longer than the Common Cuckoo and have evolved strategies that are in
advance of the Common Cuckoo, which means that Australian hosts have
also evolved strategies to counter these, and so it goes on, a
continuous war.....
Happy birding
Penny, Gloucester NSW
On 16/06/2017 10:37 PM, Virginia Abernathy wrote:
> Hi John,
>
>
> That's a great question! I think this is an area that still needs a lot more
> research, though there does seem to be some evidence of territoriality in
> some brood parasites. For the Pacific Koel, the males constantly advertise
> themselves by sitting on a high perch and giving their "ko-el" call. But its
> not understood if this is for mating purposes or if the male is signalling to
> other males: this is my nesting territory, back off. I have definitely seen
> males fighting/posturing to one another, but again, I'm not sure if this is a
> fight over a female or of an area. However, myself and many other COG members
> have noted that male koels often call very close to host nests that contain
> koel eggs/nestlings. I've also seen female koels very close to parasitised
> nests.
>
>
> In North America, female brown-headed cowbirds have been described as
> sometimes being territorial and defending their breeding grounds, though
> their territories often overlap. However, for cowbirds, its not as important
> to defend a parasitised nest since many cowbird hosts are capable of raising
> more than one cowbird.
>
>
> That's my take anyway!
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Virginia
>
> ________________________________
> From: Birding-Aus <> on behalf of John
> Leonard <>
> Sent: 16 June 2017 14:17
> To: Birding Aus
> Subject: [Birding-Aus] Cuckoo behaviour
>
> Can someone answer this question I had from someone at work, I can't find any
> information.
>
> Has it been observed that any species of cuckoo, having laid an egg in a host
> nest, then defends that nest against predators or other cuckoos trying to
> parasitise it?
>
> John Leonard
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