Cuckoo: Cheating by Nature

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. [em](Apr.) [/em]