Wild Facts About The Yellow-Billed Cuckoo
Quick Facts About Yellow-Billed Cuckoo Birds
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Scientific Name |
Coccyzus americanus |
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Common Name(s) |
Yellow-Billed Cuckoo, also called “Rain Crow” thanks to its habit of calling at the approach of storms (Bull and Farrand Jr. 1994) |
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Animal Type |
Land Bird |
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Diet |
Primarily caterpillars and cicadas but also grasshoppers, katydids, dragonflies, beetles, and crickets. They also eat small frogs, and small lizards, like Green Anoles (Anolis carolinensis). |
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Found |
Always found in heavy cover; only ventures into the open rarely. Very shy and secretive. Look for Yellow-Billed Cuckoo Birds in moist woods and thickets, and in vegetation surrounding ponds. Seems to especially like willow trees and overgrown orchards. Found only in North Carolina during the summer months as it migrates into South America during the winter. |
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Description |
Up to 12.5 inches (32 cm). Gray above, white below, with long tail. Dark eyes are ringed in either bright yellow or gray. Each gray wing has a pale, rust patch just barely visible when wings are folded. Bill curves down; top half is bright yellow and black, while bottom half is all yellow. Zygodactyl feet (inner and outer toes are directed backward; other two toes are directed forward). |
Yellow-Billed Cuckoo Bird Images
Fun Facts About Yellow-Billed Cuckoos
Yellow-Billed Cuckoos Are Famous By Association
- The Yellow-Billed Cuckoo belongs to family Cuculidae.
- This is the same family as the Greater Roadrunner of the American southwest which is, of course, the inspiration for the Sunday morning cartoon Roadrunner character familiar to all Gen X-ers.
- It is also the family of birds that Shakespeare immortalized in his terms “cuckoldry”, which refers to an adulterous affair, and “cuckold”, which refers to a man with an unfaithful wife.
- While not a perfect comparison, Shakespeare used the root word for good reason. Cuckoo birds as a group are notorious brood parasites. Female birds lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species, which tricks the poor owners into raising the cuckoos’ young in place of their own.
- But some cuckoo species raise their young the hard way.
- For the most part, Yellow-Billed Cuckoos usually build their own nests, brood their own eggs, and feed their own hatchlings.
- However, they do sometimes lay one or two eggs in the nests of other birds, especially American Robins (Turdus migratorius) (Payne 2005), and Red-Winged Blackbirds (Yasukawa 2010, https://doi.org/10.1676/09-132.1.
Yellow-Billed Cuckoos Eat The Inedible
- Yellow-Billed Cuckoos eat caterpillars that other insectivorous birds avoid, like hairy caterpillars and those that are toxic and noxious to predators.
- For example, Eastern Tent caterpillars are hairy pests that can completely defoliate entire swathes of rosaceous trees and shrubs, like hawthorns and wild cherries.
- Yellow-Billed Cuckoos eat large numbers of Eastern Tent caterpillars and even seem to nest in areas with lots of these caterpillars.
- Although they can’t control these pests completely, Yellow-Billed Cuckoos devour impressive numbers of Eastern Tent caterpillars and so help to check the spread of these pests (Bull and Farrand Jr. 1994).
- Some noxious caterpillars have guts filled with toxins from poisonous plants upon which they feed. Birds that swallow these caterpillars whole vomit and sometimes even die. But Yellow-Billed Cuckoos neutralize these caterpillars by essentially gutting them.
- First, the Yellow-Billed Cuckoos seize the caterpillars in their beaks.
- Then they shake the insects hard and smack them against a branch to remove the caterpillars’ guts.
- Then the birds flip the caterpillars into the air and swallow them whole (Payne 2005).
