Cuckoos | Cuculiformes

Koekoeksvogels | Cucos | Cuckoos

Slender birds with a long, graduated tail and a zygodactyl foot: two toes forward and two back, the outer toe being turned to the rear. Most species move through the foliage by flying and clambering and spend much of their time in cover; the anis and the ground-cuckoos, by contrast, forage largely on or just above the ground. The slightly decurved bill opens into a wide gape; the diet is largely insects, including the hairy caterpillars most birds leave alone, and in the larger species also lizards and other small animals. The call is simple, much repeated and audible at a distance, and serves to hold ground. The sexes are alike; most species are brown, grey-brown or rufous, the anis glossy black. In this guide the order comprises one family with 22 species.

Families in this order

Cuckoos | Cuculidae22 speciesTwenty-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.