Most birds spend hours, days, or even weeks painstakingly building their nests. Some birds make nests out of mud, some build nests in trees, and some birds nest on the ground and simply scrape out a ...

Discover the cunning parenting techniques of cuckoos. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Cuckoos are masters of deception. When it ...

This story appears in the January 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine. For the care and feeding of its offspring, the common cuckoo outsources. When she’s ready to lay an egg, a female Cuculus ...

It usually starts with a quiet morning walk, a child’s curious shriek, or a pet tugging insistently at a bush in the backyard. There it is—tiny, fragile, and utterly helpless-looking: a baby bird, ...