Cuckoos | Cuculidae

Koekoeken | Cucos

Caterpillars bearing irritating, barbed hairs are first squeezed against a branch to strip off the skin before being swallowed; any hairs eaten anyway build up in the stomach lining and are periodically coughed up as a pellet. The ground-running member of the family catches lizards and snakes on foot and kills them by repeatedly slamming the prey against the ground or a rock; on cold mornings it warms up by raising its back feathers and exposing the black skin beneath to the sun. Another species breeds not as a pair but in groups of several adults sharing one nest, where eggs from different females are laid on top of one another. The family's eggs are plain blue-green, and the young feather over unusually fast for nestlings.