COVER STORY: SPECIES PROFILE
TE common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) breeds across a vast range in Europe and Asia. It is known to parasitise more than a hundred bird species, which, as hosts, will unwittingly rear the destroyer of their eggs and predator of their nestlings.
There are other brood parasites, but none so well known. More than 2,000 years ago, Aristotle described the cuckoo's lifestyle and yet today few people would recognise a cuckoo, even though in Britain nearly 40 species of plants bear its name and a German clock was made in its honour. (That said, the wooden bird timekeeper that emerges bears no resemblance.)
In Europe and Asia, the call of the cuckoo is celebrated as a harbinger of spring. A birds'-nesting school pal of mine, trying to ingratiate himself with a science teacher, would comment:male utters the cuckoo call, heard first in April or May, which changes in June from the two-note to the three-note
