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Grey-capped Cuckoo | Coccyzus lansbergi
Grijskopkoekoek | Cuclillo cabecigrís | Papa-lagarta-de-capuz-cinza
The Grey-capped Cuckoo is a small, dark cuckoo with a grey cap and deep cinnamon underparts. It breeds in the arid west of Ecuador and northwestern Peru, where it appears with the rainy season and is more numerous in wet years, and in northern Colombia and Venezuela. Where the birds spend the non-breeding season is largely unknown.
Voice
A series of hollow, even notes, coo-coo-coo-coo, sometimes slowing gradually. Calls mainly in the breeding season; otherwise usually silent.
Recording: Tuomas Seimola — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
25–27 cm, with a long, graduated tail. The cap is dark slate-grey and contrasts with the warm rufous-brown back and wings. The entire underparts, from throat to undertail coverts, are deep cinnamon to ochre-brown. The underside of the tail is black with large white tips. The bill is entirely black; the eye-ring is yellowish. The sexes are alike; juveniles are duller, with a browner cap.
Confusion species
Dark-billed Cuckoo Coccyzus melacoryphus is paler, with grey-brown upperparts, a black mask with a grey band along the side of the neck and pale ochre underparts. Mangrove Cuckoo Coccyzus minor has a yellow lower mandible, a whitish throat and a black mask. Little Cuckoo Coccycua minuta is entirely rufous, without a grey cap, with a red iris and a yellow bill.
Habitat
Dry forest, semi-humid forest, forest edges, riparian woodland and dense scrub, mainly in the lowlands and on lower slopes up to about 1200 m. It searches slowly in dense vegetation for caterpillars and other large insects. It builds its own loose nest of twigs in a shrub or small tree and breeds in the rainy season.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia mainly in the north, in the Caribbean lowlands and the dry inter-Andean valleys, occurring irregularly. In Ecuador in the west, mainly in the dry and semi-humid zones of the lowlands and lower slopes. In Peru in the northwest, in the regions of Tumbes, Piura and Lambayeque. On the Galápagos recorded a few times as a vagrant. Not in Bolivia. Outside the guide area in northern Venezuela.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Between January and May in dry forest and riparian woodland in southwestern Ecuador and in Tumbes, Peru, when the birds call; in wet years also away from the usual sites.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The dry forest in its breeding range is heavily fragmented and logged; the species, however, appears to use degraded vegetation as well.
Scientific name
Coccyzus lansbergi | Bonaparte, 1850
Bonaparte described the species in 1850 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Coccyzus was introduced in 1816 by Vieillot. The genus name comes from Greek kokkuzō, 'to cry cuckoo'. The species name lansbergi honours Reinhart Frans van Lansberge (1830–1873), Dutch naturalist, envoy to Colombia and Governor of Suriname (1859–1867). The specimen the first description was based on came from Bogotá, Colombia.