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Grey-Bellied Cuckoo | Cacomantis passerinus
Grijsbuikkoekoek | Cuco ventrigrís
A small, slender grey cuckoo from South Asia, recorded in the region only as a rare vagrant in eastern Arabia. It is no bigger than a thrush and is easily overlooked unless it calls.
Voice
A loud, plaintive pee-pi-pee-pee, often repeated at length, and a descending, accelerating series pee-pee-pee-pee-pee. Vagrants in Arabia rarely call; on the breeding grounds the call makes it easy to find.
Recording: Amar Kumar Nayak — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
Slender, with a long, rounded tail and a fine, slightly curved bill. Adult males and grey females are plain dark slate-grey on head, back and breast, with a white lower belly and undertail coverts and white tips to the tail feathers; in flight a white bar under the wing. There is also a rufous (hepatic) female morph, bright chestnut above with little or no barring, an unbarred rufous tail and white below with dark bars. Juveniles resemble the rufous morph but are duller and more barred.
Confusion species
Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) is much larger, with pointed wings and a barred belly in grey birds; hepatic female Common Cuckoos are densely barred black on the upperparts and tail. Plaintive Cuckoo (Cacomantis merulinus), a close relative from South-East Asia not recorded in the region, has an orange-buff belly. Its size and light build make it look more like a small thrush than a cuckoo.
Habitat
In its core range open woodland, scrub, gardens and farmland with trees. Vagrants in Arabia have been found in parks, gardens and wooded farmland, often together with other Asian migrants.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the habitats of North Africa and the Middle East.
Range and movements
A vagrant in the region, with a handful of records in the United Arab Emirates and Oman, mainly in autumn and winter. Beyond the region it breeds from northern Pakistan and the Himalayas through India to Nepal and Bangladesh; northern birds move to southern India and Sri Lanka in winter.
How and when to look
Chances are best when carefully checking parks and wooded gardens along the east coast of the Emirates and the Batinah coast of Oman in October and November, when other Asian vagrants also turn up. A small grey or rufous cuckoo always deserves a photo and a sound recording.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened and common in its core range. In the region a rare vagrant that needs to be assessed by the national rarities committees.
Scientific name
Cacomantis passerinus | (Vahl, 1797)
Vahl described the species in 1797 as Cuculus passerinus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Cacomantis was introduced in 1843 by Müller. Cacomantis is Greek, from kakos 'bad, evil' and mantis 'seer, prophet': 'prophet of evil'. passerinus is Latin for 'sparrow-like', from passer 'sparrow'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Tranquebar (Tharangambadi), India.