Common Cuckoo
The cuckoo lays its eggs in other birds’ nests, and within hours of hatching, the cuckoo chick pushes the host’s eggs out of the nest.
Bird
Common Kingfisher
The kingfisher’s streamlined beak inspired engineers who redesigned the nose of Japan’s bullet train to reduce the noise it made leaving tunnels.
Common Nightingale
A male nightingale can sing around 200 different song phrases, and unpaired males sing through the night to attract females arriving from Africa.
Common Ostrich
The ostrich lays the largest egg of any living bird, weighing about 1.4 kg, equivalent to around two dozen chicken eggs.
Common Raven
In experiments, ravens planned for the future as well as great apes, saving tools and tokens they would need later.
Common Starling
On winter evenings, starlings gather in murmurations of tens of thousands, or even over a million birds, swirling in perfectly coordinated shapes before settling to roost.
Dodo
The dodo was a giant, flightless pigeon: its closest living relative is the colourful Nicobar pigeon of Southeast Asia.
Emperor Penguin
Emperor penguins breed in the depths of the Antarctic winter, and males incubate the egg on their feet for about two months in temperatures below −40 °C without eating.
Emu
Male emus incubate the eggs alone for about eight weeks, barely eating or drinking, and can lose a large part of their body weight.
Eurasian Eagle-owl
The Eurasian eagle-owl is one of the largest owls in the world, strong enough to catch prey as big as a fox.