Notes

Summary: This book recounts one of the most remarkable natural history stories in New Zealand - the bond shared between the shining cuckoo (pipiwharauroa) and the grey warbler (riroriro). The grey warbler nest is the only one in which a cuckoo will lay its egg, and it then manages to trick the warbler parents into hatching and raising the cuckoo chick as if it were one of their own. Yet despite this unique connection, the two species lead completely different lives, with the shining cuckoo migrating up to the Pacific Islands in the winter, while the grey warbler only flies a few kilometres around its nest in its entire lifetime. These two birds, over countless generations, have become an intrinsic part of each other's lives, and this consummately realised book evokes the extraordinary qualities of this unique New Zealand story