Wild Facts About The Yellow-Billed Cuckoo
Quick Facts About Yellow-Billed Cuckoos
- Yellow-Billed Cuckoo birds are also called “Rain Crows” thanks to its habit of calling at the approach of storms (Bull and Farrand Jr. 1994).
What Yellow-Billed Cuckoo Birds Eat
- These cuckoo birds eat mostly caterpillars and cicadas, although they also eat:
- Grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets,
- Dragonflies,
- Beetles,
- Small frogs,
- Small lizards, like Green Anoles (Anolis carolinensis).
Where To Find Yellow-Billed Cuckoos
- Yellow-Billed Cuckoo birds are always found in heavy cover.
- They are shy, secretive, and venture into the open only rarely.
- Look for these birds in moist woods and thickets, and in vegetation surrounding ponds.
- They seem to favor willow trees and overgrown orchards.
- This species lives throughout the eastern United States, from Massachusetts and slightly north, south through Florida, and west through Texas and the eastern Great Plains.
What Yellow-Billed Cuckoo Birds Look Like
- Yellow-Billed Cuckoos grow up to 12.5 inches (32 cm).
- They are gray above and white below, and have:
- Dark eyes ringed in either bright yellow or gray,
- Two-toned, downward-curved bills,
- The top half is bright yellow and black
- The bottom half is all yellow
- Gray wings, each of which has a pale, rust patch just barely visible when the wings are folded,
- Zygodactyl feet
- Inner and outer toes are directed backward
- The other two toes are directed forward
- Long tails
Yellow-Billed Cuckoo Birds Are Famous By Association
- The Yellow-Billed Cuckoo belongs to family Cuculidae.
- Family Cuculidae has two claims to fame:
- It is the family to which the Greater Roadrunner of the American southwest—the inspiration for the Sunday morning cartoon “Roadrunner” character familiar to all Gen X-ers—belongs.
- It is 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 of family Cuculidae 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.
- Cuckoo birds as a group are notorious brood parasites.
- However, 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.
- But 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 Cuckoo Birds 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.
- These cuckoo birds 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).
- Chemically defended, toxic 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.
- Eventually, the cuckoos flip the caterpillars into the air and swallow them whole (Payne 2005).
Scientific Classification
|
Kingdom |
Animalia (animals) |
|
Phylum |
Chordata (chordates) |
|
Class |
Aves (birds) |
|
Order |
Cuculiformes (cuckoos, roadrunners, and anis) |
|
Family |
Cuculidae (cuckoos) |
|
Genus |
Coccyzus |
|
Species |
C. americanus |
Scientific Name |
Coccyzus americanus |
Yellow-Billed Cuckoo Photo Gallery
- Yellow-Billed Cuckoo. Coccyzus americanus. Bird. Photograph taken and design created by the author. Copyright © 2025 Now I Wonder. All rights reserved.
- Yellow-Billed Cuckoo. Coccyzus americanus. Bird. Photograph taken and design created by the author. Copyright © 2025 Now I Wonder. All rights reserved.
- Yellow-Billed Cuckoo. Coccyzus americanus. Bird. Photograph taken and design created by the author. Copyright © 2025 Now I Wonder. All rights reserved.
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