Birds not of a feather starring in Herefordshire (From Hereford Times)

Birds not of a feather starring in Herefordshire

7:00am Tuesday 5th March 2013 in News

A RARE feathered friend was captured on camera by a Herefordshire birdwatcher, who filmed a young cuckoo being fed by ‘parents’ half his size.

Steven Turner, of Much Birch, uploaded the footage to Youtube to give everyone a chance to see one of the natural world’s idiosyncrasies in action.

Cuckoos lay their eggs in other bird’s nests, then when they hatch the cuckoo chicks are raised by those birds as their own.

This can lead to the surrogate parents – hedge sparrows in Mr Turner’s video – having to “work tirelessly”

to keep the cuckoo well-fed long after it has outgrown them, and it is very unusual to catch this event on camera.

“I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time,” said Mr Turner.

View the four-minute clip here