Page 162 - For Men of Understanding

THE CUCKOO BIRD
Did you know that the cuckoo bird lays its eggs in other birds'
nests and tricks those birds into looking after its offspring?
When the time to lay eggs comes, the female cuckoo bird seems
to race with time. Alert and on watch, the bird hides among the
leaves and spies on other birds that build nests. When it sees a
familiar bird building a nest, it decides when to lay its own egg. The
bird to look after the offspring is now decided upon.
When the cuckoo bird sees that the other bird lays its eggs, it
swings into action. As soon as the other bird leaves the nest, the
cuckoo immediately flies to the nest and drops its own egg in. Here,
it does something very intelligent and throws out one of the actual
eggs belonging to the nest. This prevents the owner of the nest from
having any doubts.
The mother cuckoo works out a remarkable strategy with per-
fect timing to guarantee that its offspring makes a safe start in life.
The female cuckoo lays not one egg but twenty eggs in a season.
Accordingly, it has to find many nursing parents, spy on them and
devise good timing to lay its eggs. Since the mother cuckoo lays one
egg every two days and it takes five days for each egg to be formed
in the ovary, the bird has no time to lose.
Popping out of the egg after an incubation period of twelve
days, the cuckoo bird faces its very affectionate - yet not its own -
parents as soon as it opens its eyes for the first time after four days.
The first thing it does, as soon as it pops out of the egg, is to throw
the other eggs out of the nest when the parents are away. The nurs-
ing parents carefully feed the offspring, which they take to be theirs.
Towards week six when the offspring leaves the nest, we encounter
the interesting sight of the cuckoo, a big bird fed by two small birds.
The female cuckoo
bird lays its eggs next Let us think about why the cuckoo bird leaves its offspring to
to the eggs of the care of other birds. Does the mother cuckoo have recourse to
another bird. For this,
it observes at length a such a practice because it is too lazy or because it is not skilful
nest it chooses. As enough to build a nest? Alternatively, is it because that once it used
soon as the owner of to build nests and look after its own offspring, but then realised that
the nest leaves, it
secretly drops an egg this is a very arduous task, and then it discovered this method? Do
in the nest. you think that a bird can make such a plan on its own? Surely none
Meanwhile, it throws
one of the eggs in the of these assumptions are true. What this living thing will do is
nest out so that the inspired in it. Like all other living things, the cuckoos also do what
situation goes
unnoticed. Allah commands them to.

160 For Men of Understanding