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Little Cuckoo | Coccycua minuta
Kleine eekhoornkoekoek | Cuco menudo
The Little Cuckoo is a small, rufous cuckoo of mangroves and wet scrub: in colour a scaled-down version of the Common Squirrel Cuckoo, but with a much shorter tail. In the region it occurs only in Trinidad. It lives secretively in dense, low vegetation and is seen far less often than its larger relative; it is frequently noticed only by its dry call.
Voice
Less noisy than Common Squirrel Cuckoo. The calls heard most often are a dry, rasping chek and a harsh kak, sometimes repeated in short series. The call is usually given from dense cover and is often the only sign that the bird is present.
Recording: José María Loaiza B. — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
About 27 cm, with a fairly long, graduated tail. Head, upperparts, throat and breast are warm chestnut to rufous; towards the rear the belly becomes greyish. The tail is darker brown and the tail feathers have white tips, which show from below as a row of white spots. The bill is short, curved and yellow; the eye is red. The wings are short and rounded. The sexes are alike; young birds are duller. The shape is more compact than Common Squirrel Cuckoo, with a smaller head and a tail not much longer than the body.
Confusion species
Common Squirrel Cuckoo Piaya cayana is very similar in colour, but much larger, with a much longer tail with black, white-tipped outer feathers, a grey lower breast and a dark belly; it mainly lives higher in the forest. Mangrove Cuckoo Coccyzus minor shares the same habitat, but is grey-brown above, with a black eye mask, an ochre belly and large white tail spots. Striped Cuckoo Tapera naevia is streaked and crested.
Habitat
Mangroves, swamp forest, dense scrub and low woodland along water, also overgrown forest edges in wet areas, mainly in the lowlands. It forages hidden among low branches and dense bushes, taking insects and other invertebrates, which it snatches from leaves and twigs with a short lunge. It moves through the vegetation in short hops and flies only short distances. The nest is a deep cup in a tree or in bamboo, in which the female lays two white eggs. Unlike Striped Cuckoo, the species, like most American cuckoos, incubates its own eggs.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
In the region only in Trinidad, mainly in the mangroves and wet lowlands along the west and east coasts; it is absent from Tobago. Outside the region from Panama and northern Colombia and Venezuela through the Guianas and the Amazon basin to Bolivia, Peru and Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the mangroves and wet scrub of Trinidad, such as around the Caroni and Nariva swamps. The species sits still in the vegetation and is often seen only when it hops from branch to branch; the dry chek is often the first sign. Patience at the edge of the mangroves, at a spot with a view into the low branches, gives the best chance.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species has a very large range in South America. In Trinidad it is tied to mangroves and wet lowlands and appears to be scarce; the protection of those areas matters for this species too.
Scientific name
Coccycua minuta | (Vieillot, 1817) (GBIF: Piaya minuta)
Vieillot described the species in 1817 as Coccyzus minutus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Coccycua was introduced in 1830 by Lesson. Coccycua is a blend of the genus names Coccyzus (cuckoo) and Coua (coua). minuta is Latin for 'small', after the small size. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.