FEMALE OF THE SPECIES GREAT TINAMOU

It pays not to put all your eggs in one basket

- Lucy Cooke

AT FIRST GLANCE, the great tinamou (Tinamus major) seems a candidate for nature's worst mother. After a fleeting liaison, this tropical bird abandons her eggs on the forest floor, leaving the father to do all the caretaking while she waltzes off to mate with another male.

Tinamous are grounddwelling junglefowl found in the forests of Central and South America. Resembling big brown quails with tiny shrunken heads, they blend into the leaf litter - a logical adaptation, since the forest floor is teeming with predators. What's puzzling is why such an artfully camouflaged bird lays lurid turquoise eggs - which positively pop in their dark surroundingsand leaves the male alone to protect them.