Robin Feeds Young Cuckoo

This is one of nature’s strangest stories: cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other, usually much smaller birds. The young cuckoo hatches earlier than the young of the host birds and simply pushes their eggs out of the nest because it needs the “stepparents” all to itself in order to grow big and strong. The most amazing thing about the story is that the female cuckoo can match the coloring of her eggs to those of the host birds. Fritz has beautifully illustrated how the much smaller host has to feed this impossibly large glutton.