Common cuckoo of two years. More than 100 host species have been recorded: meadow pipit, dunnock and Eurasian reed warbler are the most common hosts in northern Europe; garden warbler, meadow pipit, pied wagtail and European robin in central Europe; brambling and common redstart in Finland; and great reed warbler in Hungary. Female common cuckoos are divided into gentes – groups of females favouring a particular host species' nest and laying eggs that match those of that species in color and pattern. Evidence from mitochondrial DNA analyses suggest that each gene may have multiple independent origins due to parasitism of specific hosts
The Golden Bird The Golden Bird "The Golden Bird" is a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, number 57, about the pursuit of a golden bird by a gardener's three sons. A French version, collected by Paul Sébillot in "Littérature orale de la Haute-Bretagne", is called "Le Merle d'or" (The Golden Blackbird). Andrew Lang included that variant in "The Green Fairy Book" (1892). It is Aarne-Thompson folktale type 550, "The Golden Bird", a Supernatural Helper. Other tales of this type include "The Bird 'Grip'", "The Greek Princess and the Young Gardener", "Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird and the Gray Wolf", "How Ian Direach got the