Cuckoos lay their eggs in other species’ nests when the intruding chick hatches, it dumps its nestmates onto the ground “like a malevolent little wrestler.”Īckerman has plumbed the bird brain before, and completists will notice some overlap between “The Bird Way” and her last book, “The Genius of Birds.” Both, for example, highlight the bowerbird, a finicky aesthete whose males woo their mates in elaborate courts of flowers, shells, even bits of plastic. Their behavior is fascinating, in part, because it’s so recognizable: Spend enough time with your binoculars, and you can, as Ackerman writes, watch birds “helping, cooperating, collaborating, acting selflessly.” Like Homo sapiens, they’re also capable of shocking chicanery. Trapped indoors, we’ve turned to feeders for entertainment with traffic quieted, we’ve delighted in their songs.
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