Pallid Cuckoos parasitise birds with open cup shaped nests including Willie Wagtails, woodswallows, whistlers, robins, orioles, cuckoo-shrikes and honeyeaters. The incubation period for the cuckoo egg is 12-14 days which is shorter than the host species incubation period. The larger and stronger cuckoo chick ejects the host’s eggs or young from the nest.
Back in late November, at the popular Hall Road birding site in State Forest on the edge of farmland near Wairewa in East Gippsland, I became aware of a Pallid Cuckoo chick by its incessant calling to be fed by its foster parents, a pair of White-napped Honeyeaters. While the chick was still quite young and small it was larger than the host parents and by the time they finished raising the chick it would dwarf them.
Please click on photos to enlarge.
The bird world has evolved many reproduction solutions with cuckoos that use other bird species to raise their young being one of the more amazing evolutionary developments.
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