All species › Cuckoos › Cuckoos › Black-billed Cuckoo
Position in the tree Birds Aves › Birds with a flexible palate Neognathae › All other modern birds Neoaves › Doves, turacos and allies Columbaves › Bustards, turacos and cuckoos Otidimorphae
Black-billed Cuckoo | Coccyzus erythropthalmus
Zwartsnavelkoekoek | Cuclillo pico negro
Black-billed Cuckoo breeds in southern Canada and the northern and eastern United States and winters in north-western South America. On its way there and back it passes through the guide area, in small numbers and usually inconspicuously. It is much scarcer than Yellow-billed Cuckoo, which follows the same route.
Voice
Usually silent on migration. The song on the breeding grounds is a rhythmic, hollow cu-cu-cu in groups of two to five notes, repeated for a long time; also soft clucking sounds.
Recording: Jeff Stewart — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
28–31 cm, slender and long-tailed. Plain grey-brown above, white to off-white below, without a buff tinge. The bill is all black and slightly decurved; adults have a narrow ring of red bare skin around the eye. From below the tail is grey with narrow white tips and a dark band in front of them, without broad white spots. The wing shows at most a faint warm wash, no clear rufous patch. Young birds have a pale yellow to greyish eye-ring, a little more rufous in the primaries and fainter white tail tips.
Confusion species
Yellow-billed Cuckoo Coccyzus americanus has a yellow lower mandible, a clear rufous patch in the primaries and a black undertail with large white spots. Mangrove Cuckoo Coccyzus minor has a black mask, a buff belly and also a yellow lower mandible. Young Black-billed Cuckoos with rufous in the wing are the main pitfall; the all-dark bill and the tail pattern then settle the matter.
Habitat
On migration in almost any wooded terrain: forest edge, secondary forest, semi-evergreen forest, coastal woodland, scrub and gardens with trees, mainly in the lowlands and hills. Feeds mainly on caterpillars, including hairy species that other birds leave alone, and other insects.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Passes through much of the guide area, mainly on the Gulf and Caribbean side: Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco and the Yucatán Peninsula, and further Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama; scarcer on the Pacific side and in north-western Mexico. Breeds from southern Canada to the central and eastern United States and winters in north-western South America, from Colombia and Venezuela to Peru and Bolivia.
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The best chance is in October and early May in coastal woods and forest edges along the Gulf of Mexico and on the Yucatán Peninsula, where other migrants also make landfall. In a cuckoo with white underparts the bill is the first feature to check; the eye-ring and the tail pattern confirm the identification.
Conservation status
Not threatened globally, but numbers are declining on the breeding grounds, among other things through loss of forest, the control of caterpillar outbreaks with insecticides and collisions with buildings on migration. In the guide area a scarce passage migrant.
Scientific name
Coccyzus erythropthalmus | (Wilson, 1811)
Wilson described the species in 1811 as Cuculus erythropthalma; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Coccyzus was introduced in 1816 by Vieillot. Coccyzus is Greek, from kokkuzō 'to cry cuckoo', after the cuckoo's call. erythropthalmus is Greek, from eruthros 'red' and ophthalmos 'eye', after the red eye-ring. The specimen the first description was based on came from near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.