Cuckoo being fed
I had so many compliments about my photo of a juvenile Cuckoo about to be fed that I thought I would post what happened next. One would think that the Pipit foster parent would pass across the morsel beak to beak, but instead the Pipit repeatedly put its head deep inside the young Cuckoo's gaping beak. It reminded me of a circus lion tamer placing his head inside the lion's mouth. If you are looking at this photo in isolation here's the photo I posted yesterday which shows an earlier photo in this sequence, and the write-up explains more about the breeding biology of Cuckoos: www.flickr.com/photos/timmelling/51368867311/in/dateposted/ And incidentally, each time the Pipit had delivered food, the Cuckoo would deliver an ungrateful peck in return, as if to chivvy it along to fetch more food. This was on the Peak District Moors in South Yorkshire.
Cuckoo being fed
I had so many compliments about my photo of a juvenile Cuckoo about to be fed that I thought I would post what happened next. One would think that the Pipit foster parent would pass across the morsel beak to beak, but instead the Pipit repeatedly put its head deep inside the young Cuckoo's gaping beak. It reminded me of a circus lion tamer placing his head inside the lion's mouth. If you are looking at this photo in isolation here's the photo I posted yesterday which shows an earlier photo in this sequence, and the write-up explains more about the breeding biology of Cuckoos: www.flickr.com/photos/timmelling/51368867311/in/dateposted/ And incidentally, each time the Pipit had delivered food, the Cuckoo would deliver an ungrateful peck in return, as if to chivvy it along to fetch more food. This was on the Peak District Moors in South Yorkshire.