It was early December, 2023. We were living in a brand new house. It was new to us, anyway. It was piled to the ceiling with boxes waiting to be stored in their forever spaces. I sat up in bed at 3am. I had tossed and turned up to that point trying fruitlessly to fall asleep against the background noise of a disturbing reality I was facing.
This latest move into this breathtaking home on the river in the canyon, peaceful and secluded, where we always wanted to live, picturesque and promising, was supposed to change my life for the better. This was supposed to be the dawn of a new era for me, focusing on creative projects, restoring and renewing my faith in God and man. I envisioned holding meditation retreats on my patio deck overlooking the river. This was the day I was supposed to wake up in my bed in this new space with the sun shining ready to leap off into unfathomable creative heights, but instead, I was hiding under my covers filled with doom and dread. Here I was, once more, trembling from insomnia, facing more inescapable bullshit and drama of other people’s making, and once again, no foreseeable outcome looked pleasant. How could this be happening to me again? How could it happen here? Is not anywhere sacred? I thought.
The very next thought that popped into my mind to answer those questions was something about the cuckoo.
I flew out of bed, grabbed my phone and started frantically googling to figure out, what is it about the cuckoo that’s keeping me awake at night?
The Cuckoo
The cuckoo, for the reader’s edification, belongs to a category of birds known as brood parasites. If that name sounds creepy, it should. The cuckoo masks its egg to look almost identical to the eggs of other birds in its ecosystem. The “mother” cuckoo will then carefully lay her camouflaged egg in the nest of a brooding mother bird. The cuckoo’s egg is disguised inconspicuously among the host’s other eggs. The nesting host cannot distinguish her eggs from the cuckoo’s eggs. So, when the cuckoo hatches precociously to its fellow nestlings, it either destroys the host’s eggs by pushing them out of the nest or it pushes nestlings of the nest after they hatch. In this way, it has no competition for food, resources or parenting. It gets the undivided attention of the host and the best possible chance for future survival.
I have been looking for a reason why the cuckoo parents don’t raise their own young. They just don’t. They have other things to do. Rather than adapt to become better parents or learn nest building to secure the future of their progeny, they become better adept at hiding their eggs in the nests or having harder shells so that if detected their eggs can’t be aborted by the host with a mere peck. Some brood parasite parents even retaliate and destroy the nests of host birds who reject their eggs. This way, the host birds learn to accept raising the parasite’s young-or else!
So, essentially, brood parasites are what they are. They will always exist, and nature must find a way to defend against them.