Cuckoos | Cuculidae

Koekoeken | Cucos | Cuckoos

Twenty-two species in eight genera occur in this guide. Unlike the cuckoos of the Old World, most here build their own nest and raise their own young. The anis live year-round in noisy groups in open country, scrub and along rivers; several pairs lay together in a single large communal nest, and the whole group incubates and feeds. The squirrel cuckoos slip through the canopy with their long tail like rufous squirrels and build a loose platform of twigs, and the ground-cuckoos of the Amazonian forest follow army ants and herds of peccaries to catch the insects and small animals they flush. Only the Striped Cuckoo and the two pheasant-cuckoos (Dromococcyx) are brood parasites: the female lays her egg in the closed nest of a smaller songbird, and the chick kills its nestmates with the hooked tip of its bill. The Yellow-billed Cuckoo is a migrant from North America that winters here.