Here are four things I’ve learned so far from Bernd Heinrich’s book The Nesting Season: Cuckoos, Cuckolds, and the Invention of Monogamy, published by Harvard University Press, which will be available in a few days:

—Male and female Jacobin cuckoos work together to insert their eggs into the nests of other birds. The male cuckoo distracts the occupiers of the nest while the female cuckoo sneaks up and deposits the eggs. Later, presumably, they exchange high-fives.

—The Egyptian plover is neither a plover nor a resident of Egypt.

—Ravens sometimes kill newborn lambs.

—While albatrosses mate for life and return each year to the same nest, that doesn’t mean they’re sexually exclusive. One out of four chicks raised by a pair of albatrosses is actually sired by a different male.

And then there is this:

“Strict” monogamy can arguably be found only in a parasitic worm, Schistosoma mansonii, where the male and female entwine in one’s liver in an incessant lifelong copulation and almost ceaseless outpouring of eggs.

I believe “aww” and “ick” are both acceptable reactions.

(The Chronicle published a profile of Mr. Heinrich in 1999 after a book he wrote on ravens was published.)