You are listening to a program from BBC Radio 4.

This is the sound at the heart of my guest's research.

The call is, of course, made by the common cuckoo,

the territorial song of the male, to be precise.

My guest is Nick Davis, professor of behavioral ecology at the University of Cambridge, a man who spent more

than 30 springs and summers on the Finland of Cambridgeshire teasing apart the relationship

between the cuckoo and the birds it dupes into bringing up its young.

Crucially his work isn't just about sitting there and twitching.

Nick studies have deployed simple yet ingenious experiments among the Reed beds where the birds nest that have involved

mock eggs, stuffed birds and miniature loud speakers all to piece together the cuckoo's dark story.

Oh and he's also used DNA fingerprinting to unravel the surprisingly

spicy love life of the humble hedge sparrow. Nick, welcome to the Life Scientific.

Thank you very much.

For you personally, Nick, what comes to mind when you hear that recording of the cuckoo?

Oh, I just think of spring days out on the fen and blue skies and just the thrill of being outside after a winter

inside at the desk. I introduced you as a professor of behavioral ecology. Can you

explain what behavioral ecology is and what aspects of the natural world it seeks to illuminate?

Yes, it's really attempting an evolutionary explanation of animal behavior looking at the decisions animals make in their daily lives

for survival and reproduction and asking why do they do that? Analyzing the costs and

benefits of alternative courses of action and trying to work out why the animals are choosing that way of behaving

rather than something else.

So it's a meeting point between behavior, ecology, which is the stage on which individuals play their behavior and evolution

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