h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Egg Shell Mimicry Advice for Young Lady Cuckoos - A45740009
Author: Tibley Bobley - U170471

Using the Stretcher Challenge to indulge my fascination with cuckoos. There's a lot more interesting stuff about cuckoos besides their egg shell mimicry. I had to stop myself.

I know it's a bit short for a lecture but it is for a class of birds

This is funny.

And as mean as a cuckoo.

The next logical step might be an inspirational book for future business executives on how to learn from cuckoos.

You could see it at Harvard Business School.

An excellent use of all that ornithological knowledge. And a good connection with the shell theme.

Ms GB

Neatly done, and very entertaining

Good luck for the rest of the competition!

Well done. Entertaining and educative in a very subtle way.

Wow! This was really terrific. Fascinating information adroitly written. Loved Madame Chairbird and her handling of the group
dynamics of the session.

Thank you kindly all! Very grateful for your encouraging comments

And the best of luck to my fellow stretchers

Good luck to you too!

This is my first time venturing into AWW (I know, the shame...) so I'm not too sure what sort of comments to make.

I thought the piece was lovely - amusing, well laid out and informative too. There were just 2 places where my brain had to stop and re-read: one was on the size of the eggs, I couldn't work out if they were bigger or smaller. And the other was at the end, where it announced next week's lecture, closely followed by tomorrow's lesson.

How refreshing to read something so original

This is fun and yet manages to convey quite a lot of information about cuckoos. This is a neat trick.

I agree with Beatrice about the end being a little confusing. It might be an idea to swap the references to 'next week's lecture' and 'tomorrows lesson.'

Thank you Beatrice and mVpoet

I can see that you're both quite right about the confusing bits and I've altered them. If they still seem at all unclear, let me know and I'll have a further furkle.



PS Very honoured to be the first in AWW to benefit from your wisdom Beatrice

It paints a great picture, TB And I have the speaker in a mortar board, for some reason

Yeah, little birdie with mortarboard and pince-nez.

neat.

Felt like yelling 'lay off those dunnocks!' from the back of the class.

Clever.

Oh yes. I think she'd have to wear a mortarboard and pince-nez. And if she'd had hair, it would've had to be iron-grey and scraped back into a severe, rock-hard bun

I've got a soft spot for dunnocks too Waz. Nice, well mannered little birds. They almost give the impression of being too polite to refuse to baby-sit for those terrible, 'unnatural' mothers

Thanks folks

Hello again TB, . Not sure I should offer more but it's double for being the UnderGuide QA's 'Gem of the Month' (for January's UG picks).

For the QA comment on this - see the Stretcher judge comment - the QA had nothing new to add .

Thanks TB, and thanks to the Stretcher organisers too - we had more Stretcher pieces in February's picks.

UG Eds

Oh, I say! Thank you very much

I think I must have had too much

So happy

Wonderful.