Footage of a robin feeding a cuckoo bird in a garden has warmed the hearts of birdwatchers in the UK. Maureen Carr from Kilca, Ireland saw the unlikely friendship in her backyard and grabbed her camera, snapping some pictures and a video.
The robin feeding the cuckoo.
‘We noticed the big bird at the bottom of the garden and, at first, we thought it must have been a sparrow hawk, but we realised it wasn’t when the wee birds weren’t afraid of it,’ she told BBC.
‘It was then that we noticed the robin kept going back to different spots round the garden and was actually feeding it [the cuckoo]. The louder the cuckoo got, the more we knew the robin would come back and eventually it did,’ she said.
Take a look at the darling birds, having their brekkie together:
According to Anne-Marie McDevitt of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), it’s likely that the robin thought the cuckoo was one of its own chicks. Cuckoos often lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, with the new hosts taking over the feeding job from the biological mother. Some call it lazy parenting, others call it crafty.
‘When a female cuckoo finds a suitable nest, and the hosts aren’t looking, she removes one of their eggs and lays her own egg in its place,’ McDevitt told BBC.
‘The young cuckoo hatches after only 12 days and quickly pushes the hosts’ eggs or babies out of the nest. After 19 days it leaves the nest, but the hosts continue to feed it for two more weeks, by which time it has grown much bigger than them.’
This sighting has made a lasting impression on Carr. ‘I think everyone was taking more of an interest on what was going on on their own doorstep during lockdown, it’s amazing what you see when you actually look,’ she said.
Image credit: Twitter
