Common cuckoo Common cuckoo The common cuckoo ("Cuculus canorus") is a member of the cuckoo order of birds, "Cuculiformes", which includes the roadrunners, the anis and the coucals. This species is a widespread summer migrant to Europe and Asia, and winters in Africa. It is a brood parasite, which means it lays eggs in the nests of other bird species, particularly of dunnocks, meadow pipits, and reed warblers. Although its eggs are larger than those of its hosts, the eggs in each type of host nest resemble the host's eggs. The adult too is a mimic, in its case of the sparrowhawk;
The Painted Bird The Painted Bird The Painted Bird is a 1965 novel by Jerzy Kosiński which describes World War II as seen by a boy, considered a "Gypsy or Jewish stray," wandering about small villages scattered around an unspecified country in Eastern Europe. The story was originally introduced by Kosiński as autobiographical. It was only upon its publication by Houghton Mifflin that he quietly refrained from making such claims any further. Assumed by reviewers to be a memoir of a Jewish survivor and witness to the Holocaust telling the supposed true story of his search for the deported family, the book received