Sunday 13 May 2018

Russians Are All Set To Retake Alaska!

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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