that is the fear in the ornithological field,
common and oriental cuckoos may be moving into Alaska, which
is a grim prospect for resident warblers, buntings, and wagtails, “It looks
like cuckoos are ready to invade North America,” says University of Illinois ornithologist Mark Hauber, the study’s corresponding author, I am guessing that
we all know that cuckoos lay an egg in another birds nest, the cuckoo hatches
and pushes the other eggs from the nest and the hapless parents rear the cuckoo
as their own,
but here is the thing, many birds do indeed recognise that the egg
is not theirs and push it out of the nest, but not so in Alaska, Hauber and his
multi-university team of colleagues placed more than 100 3-D printed cuckoo
eggs in the nests of birds in Siberia and in Alaska, in Siberia, although the
sites were all outside the usual cuckoo nesting range, 14 of the 22 eggs were
rejected, suggesting in the words of the study that “Siberian birds had strong
anti-parasite responses.” In Alaska, however, only one among the 96 eggs
planted was rejected, by a Red-throated pipit, the other test subjects accepted
their eggs, not seeming to mind that it differed from their own in color and
size, the worry of course is that the cuckoos could ultimately spread through all of North America from Alaska, the Russians are coming! but what to do to stop them?
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