The Imposter ~
A
reed warbler (small American songbird) is a very tiny bird and lives in
thick reed-beds. In this photo it's playing Mum, feeding food into the
wide-opened beaks of an enormous baby cuckoo.
It's just that the baby is an imposter. It's the lazy characteristic of
cuckoos, they usually refuse to build their own nest; what the female
cuckoos always do is put their eggs into nests of other birds, who are
usually the ones feeding the babies in their nests, the intruders or
imposters!
As
the little cuckoos grow too big for the tiny nest, they have no choice
but to leave 'home', without as much as saying Thanks.
The surrogate-Mum ~
The
red squirrels are known to be unsocial birds, that prefer to live
almost completely isolated. The photo shows however rather an exception.
A female red squirrel has adopted a new born baby orphan seeming with
loving tenderness. The curious thing about it is, that the red
squirrel, though usually hostile, will adopt but only babies with the
same family connection. They seem to know who is a relative and who
isn't.
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