Channel Billed Cuckoo

This poor currawong is trying to feed 3 channel-billed cuckoos. This parasitic migratory bird lays it's eggs in the surrogate's nest, often alongside the hosts eggs. Once hatched, the cuckoos become so large, that the native birds are either kicked out of the nest or die of starvation. By mid-February, the "real" parents come calling, and round up all of the juveniles for the long migration back to Papua New Guinea / Indonesia... After the surrogates do all of the hard work, of course! In this video, you can almost actually hear the cuckoos calling "Mamma! Mamma! Mum! Mum!" (or maybe it's just my imagination!)

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• channel
• billed
• cuckoo
• parasitic
• migratory
• bird
• magpie
• nest
• chick
• juvenile
• pee
• wee
• crow
• raven
• surrogate
• parents
• WIRES
• Central
• Coast
• NSW
• currawong

[MsYamilover1]

dude u should take a stone and throw it at the cukoos and shouted U TRAITOR!!

[barcelonaloca]

That's EXACTLY what's going on here, two of them.... it's driving me cuckoo!!!!! Mid February???? Lordy....

[MajorMin3]

Great footage. They're nasty little buggers but I cant help being fascinated by them. I get excited in late September when they rock up in town.

[tazzythespazzy]

We saw exactly the same thing a week ago while on holiday at Burrill Pines south of Ulludulla. The currawong was constantly on the go trying to feed 3 huge channel-bills.

[lj4u]

this is happening to a pair of maggies in the tree behind my house

[SlimeTron5000]

@cheekychickenhead more irritating than koels

[cheekychickenhead]

Oh I feel so sorry for that currawong just look at the size of those babies. It is amazing that the cukoos can get away with this nature is crazy. Great video thanks for sharing. These Channel billed cuckoos are so noisey we have them in our area too.

[scmhwo]

sound like monkey and ape

[pooperscooper71]

Just listening to 'Naked Scientist' podcast about this cuckoo phenomena and thought I'd look it up on youtube. Apparently some cuckoos are much more discrete and just push the eggs out of the nest. Poor Currawong.