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  • Published: 17 June 2025
  • ISBN: 9780857526410
  • Imprint: Doubleday
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 112
  • RRP: $26.00
Categories:

The Curious Life of the Cuckoo





Our greatest nature writer explores the myths, legends, history and hidden world of one of our most secretive and masterfully duplicitous animals.

Is there any bird more mysterious than the cuckoo?

It is invariably heard, and not seen. And if seen, it is mistaken for a sharp-winged hawk. The female cuckoo - by a trick that borders on alchemy - is able to disguise its egg as another's. In Greek myth the god Zeus assumed the form of a cuckoo to seduce Hera.

But we forgive the cuckoo its con-artistry, because it is the true herald of spring. It is the bird that uplifts our wintered hearts, with that first two-note 'cuk-koo' unmistakable as it sounds across the country.

In The Curious Life of the Cuckoo, John Lewis-Stempel explains one of nature's greatest enigmas in vivid, lyrical prose, and celebrates this iconic bird.

  • Published: 17 June 2025
  • ISBN: 9780857526410
  • Imprint: Doubleday
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 112
  • RRP: $26.00
Categories:

About the author

John Lewis-Stempel

John Lewis-Stempel is a writer and farmer. His books include the Sunday Times bestsellers The Running Hare and The Wood. He is the only person to have won the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing twice, with Meadowland and Where Poppies Blow. In 2016 he was Magazine Columnist of the Year for his column in Country Life. He lives in Herefordshire with his wife and two children.

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