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Squatter's rights

The nest of an unfortunate reed wabler nest was taken over on camera by a cuckoo chick in Springwatch 2009. In the nest, the newly hatched chick first removed the reed warbler's eggs watched intently by the viewers.

When only the cuckoo chick remained, the reed warbler parents continued to feed the cuckoo just as they would have done for their own brood, except that it needed vastly more feeding than their own would have.

As the series continued, viewers watched as the cuckoo chick grew into monstrous proportions in comparison to its tiny adoptive parents, practically bursting the tiny nest at the seams and completely defying the mother's attemps at brooding it.

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