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Original poster

Cuckoos in a red nest

174 replies

Yspadadden · 25/02/2019 08:22

Have you ever watched a little bird who's been duped by a cuckoo? She won't notice that her eggs have been pushed out and smashed. She won't notice that 'her' baby is towering over her whilst she exhausts herself feeding it. If you try to relieve her of that cuckoo, she'll fight for it as though it were her own.

That's nature. Cuckoos have not (as far as I know) taken over the world and driven sparrows and tits to extinction - but in hard times, they sure as heck don't help, and I see a sci-fi plot developing. What if you realised an aggressive alien group making Progress (note capital 'P') by strategically planting cuckoos in all the places little birds are threatened?

You'll have to box clever to deal with it - remember, if you attack the cuckoos, the little birds will turn on you and injure themselves the worse and anyway, a baby cuckoo has not done anything wrong. It really is not your enemy. something else is.

OP posts:
zen1 · 25/02/2019 12:52

Still can’t work out why you have posted in Feminism chatConfused

VickyEadie · 25/02/2019 13:07

Robins are aggressive little fuckers. Seagulls are a pain in the arse. I do like owls, though. Hope that helps.

sackrifice · 25/02/2019 13:16

Robins are aggressive little fuckers

I have a composter with a flat lid that I put cutworms on when I find them at my allotment and the resident robin always snatches them when I am not looking. Sneaky little fucker.

I love this thread.

We had a woodpecker in a neighboring tree last summer. I used to enjoy just listening to the knocking all day. Especially in the morning.

FemalePersonator · 25/02/2019 13:36

Seagulls are a pain in the arse.

I recently saw a seagull sitting on the roof of a car in central London. It looked quite put out about the whole thing.

Hamster00 · 25/02/2019 13:48

The original post is better if you play this while reading it

Rufusthebewilderedreindeer · 25/02/2019 14:02

Robins are aggressive little fuckers

We had a robin living in our garage

It used to dive bomb my dad when his bald head shined in the sun

Happy times

Horsewithnom · 25/02/2019 14:04

I had never thought of cuckoos as parasites before it was mentioned here.

FemalePersonator · 25/02/2019 14:10

I used to have a cat who was regularly dive-bombed by blue jays (this was when I lived in North America). Poor kitty.

Lemoncakestrudel · 25/02/2019 14:25

I once heard a knocking sound and thought it was someone hammering a nail, untilI realised the pattern was wrong. Saw my first ever nuthatch!

sackrifice · 25/02/2019 14:29

I once got side bombed by a bird that flew out of the bushes, smacked themselves on the front of my Fiat 500 [new] and dented the bonnet and presumably didn't live to tell the tale.

FemalePersonator · 25/02/2019 14:41

Years ago, I went away for the weekend and returned to find a parakeet in my flat. All of the windows were closed and no one had a key so gawd only knows how it got in.

Luckily, I found someone who wanted a parakeet so it all worked out.

But I never did figure out how it got in.

Rufusthebewilderedreindeer · 25/02/2019 14:48

So Yspadadden

Have you actually got anything to say?

I am really not good with cryptic

Rufusthebewilderedreindeer · 25/02/2019 14:51

Ooooohhhhh

Wait

The red nest bit is about labour!!!!

I get it

I thought it was a red tent reference

Never go camping in a yellow tent...bug magnet

Rufusthebewilderedreindeer · 25/02/2019 14:51

See

Thats how fucking cryptic it is!!

Iused2BanOptimist · 25/02/2019 15:00

But I never did figure out how it got in.

Maybe the parakeet crept through an open window while you were in and hid until you went out before having a good snoop around?

We've been warned to be sure to shut all windows at the end of the day at work. Someone found a half eaten banana. They are blaming squirrels but I bet parakeets like bananas too.

VickyEadie · 25/02/2019 15:01

Was once walking the dog near a big country park and came across a whole load of twitchers with big cameras, zoom lenses, etc. Turned out they were hoping to see a Hoopoe that was in the area (way off course as they normally live in warmer climes).

VickyEadie · 25/02/2019 15:02

Maybe the parakeet crept through an open window while you were in and hid until you went out before having a good snoop around?

Ooh, that's a thought. Sneaky little feckers are parakeets. Apparently.

FemalePersonator · 25/02/2019 15:08

I wish MN had existed when The Curious Incident of the Parakeet at the Weekend occurred!

You will notice that I was careful not to mention the parakeet's sex as I didn't want to risk mis-gendering it and having my post deleted.

Same thing with the seagull.

FemalePersonator · 25/02/2019 15:09

Anyone else encounter the Wild Parakeets of London?

My first experience was early one morning: eeep eeep Eeeep EEEeeep EEEEP EEEEP. Noisy little bastids.

Vixxxy · 25/02/2019 15:19

...ok, thats nice.

VickyEadie · 25/02/2019 15:29

I lived overseas for a few years and once, as I lay in bed, realised there were two bats roosting on a beam on the ceiling. The process of ejecting them was feckin' hilarious.

FemalePersonator · 25/02/2019 15:29

I want to hear more about the bats!

VickyEadie · 25/02/2019 15:41

The roosting bats. We'd been away for a fortnight and we think they'd crawled in via the space around the outlet hose for the air-con unit in the bedroom.

I said "We'll wait until dusk, then they'll want to go out and catch food, so we'll open the windows and they'll go off (we'd sealed up the space around the pipe with scrunched-up foil by this time)."

Come dusk, we went up - the bats by this time were doing laps of the bedroom ceiling - and opened the windows. Did they fly out? Did they fuck, the awkward little fuckers. We tried flapping towels in the air at them, but they just continued doing laps, like a sort of aerial Le Mans circuit.

Then I recalled that in the garage (it was a rented house) was a large fishing net on a stick someone had left behind, so went and got it. There then followed the 'Vicky attempts to catch bats in net' sketch, proving if I had ever been in any doubt that I'd have been crap at lacrosse.

This went on for some time, punctuated only by pauses to sit on the bed and cry tears of genuine laughter with partner, who was honking like a demented goose (she was doing nothing to help at all, I might add). Eventually, I caught one and ejected it out of the window, whereupon it flew straight back in.

After about an hour of this absolute farce, one clearly said to the other "Right Dennis, we've had our fun, time to go and eat mosquitoes". And with that, they flew out, dipping their wings like the Red Arrows in a sort of mocking salute.

LuggsaysNotaWomen · 25/02/2019 15:56

OhWah! I want bats now... and a cuckoo clock (they’ve some nice modern ones on amazon - yes I did look).

We’ve got long tailed tits nesting in our bird box that has been unused since we put it up about six years ago. I’m inordinately excited about it.

sackrifice · 25/02/2019 15:57

I once saw a cormorant.

Yes, we live near a canal and I was down the garden and all of a sudden I heard a neighbour screech.

The cormorant as you will no doubt know, has to stand with it's wings outstretched and then will take off, and dive straight into water, swim like a bullet for a couple of minutes and then explode out of the water high into the air with its prey.

It stood across from our garden, sunning itself, then flew straight up in the air about 10 feet from me, crashed into the water and then we watched as it came out the canal the other side of the bridge.

Amazing bird. My neighbour has lived here for over 60 years, and he had never seen one and he was so over the moon it was quite sweet to see.