A COLLARED dove calling with a half-hearted variation of its usual call, almost imitating a cuckoo but I was not hoodwinked.

It is a common occurrence and I occasionally receive readers comments that they have heard cuckoos in autumn and winter when the birds have long since flown from our shores.

Starlings are excellent mimics of course, not only of other birds but also of some of our gadgets such as telephones ringing.

It can be disconcerting to hear a curlew calling from high in a fir tree, for example, or warblers singing out of season so to speak.

Mimicry in insects is fairly common but that relates to appearance rather than song and is known as a superficial similarity of one species to another.

By this means a relatively defenceless species may be protected from predation by mimicking another species which is distasteful or even poisonous to would be predators or possibly deters them in some other way.

Some species are equipped with some form of deterrent to predators but gain double protection by resembling each other and predators soon learn which to leave well alone.

In some ways it works that way with us in that we tend to avoid black and yellow, buzzing insects, for example, even if they are wasps and have no stings.

Not that the collared dove was indulging in mimicry, it was simply calling two of its usual three-note calls.

Maybe two notes are adequate for its needs and it saves wear and tear on the calling apparatus.

It may seem silly but that is how evolution works. After all, we use mimicry, do we not?

Well I do, when I am out and about nature watching and more so when indulging in some nature photography.

I have a jacket beautifully designed with green and brown leafy foliage, and a hide I can sit in with the same colouration. Camouflage! If I wore the "top" with white jeans, I could run through the woods and all you'd see would be ghostly white legs. Dearie me! A scary thought.

Perhaps the most interesting mimicry of all is that in the world of birds when a female cuckoo's eggs imitate by colour, those of the host species.

Similar

Some are remarkably similar, even if somewhat larger and thus we have dunnock cuckoos, meadow pipit cuckoos, reed warbler cuckoos and so on, each female cuckoo "specialising" if you like, in producing eggs that match closely those of her chosen host, and presumably her mate, who goes out searching for nests with eggs and then calls her to say so, knows the lady's species preference and egg production ability in terms of colour. Ansome!

● Trevor Beer will answer your nature and countryside queries. Just drop him a line at Roselea, 38 Park Avenue, Barnstaple, EX31 2ES.