Great Spotted Cuckoo
Clamator glandarius
Distinctive, boldly patterned cuckoo with a spiffy crest and white-spotted wings. Adult has a gray crest and gray-brown back. Juveniles are even more contrasting, with a rusty wing panel and black crest and back. Typically restless, making short flights often and hopping on the ground with tail raised. A nest parasite of corvids (crows, jays, and relatives). Found in semiarid open woodland and dry savannas. Noisy, often giving "krree krree krree" calls.
Identification
This species is slightly larger than the common cuckoo at 35–39 cm (14–15 in) in length, but looks much larger with its broad wings and long narrow tail. The adult is grey above with a slender body, long tail and strong legs. It has a grey cap, grey wings, a yellowish face and upper breast, and white underparts. Sexes are similar. The juveniles have blackish upperparts and cap, and chestnut primary wing feathers. This species has a magpie-like flight.<p>It is a bird of warm open country with trees. It feeds on insects, spiders, small reptiles and hairy caterpillars, which are distasteful to many birds.<p>The great spotted cuckoo's call is a loud cher-cher-kri-kri and variations.
Taxonomy
In 1747 the English naturalist George Edwards included an illustration and a description of the great spotted cuckoo in the second volume of his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds. He used the English name "The Great Spotted Cuckow". Edwards based his hand-coloured etching on a specimen that had been shot in Gibraltar and sent to the English naturalist Mark Catesby in London. When in 1758 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he placed the great spotted cuckoo with the other cuckoos in the genus Cuculus. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Cuculus glandarius and cited Edwards' work. The great spotted cuckoo is now placed in the genus Clamator that was introduced by German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup in 1829. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. The genus name Clamator is Latin for "shouter" from clamare, "to shout". The specific epithet glandarius is Latin meaning "of acorns".
- Scientific name
- Clamator glandarius
- Authority
- (Linnaeus, 1758)
- Order
- Cuculiformes
- Family
- Cuculidae
- Genus
- Clamator
Range and habitat
- Migration
- Complete migrants
Behavior
Unlike the common cuckoo, neither the hen nor the hatched chick of this species evict the host's eggs, but the young magpies often die because they cannot compete successfully with the cuckoo for food. However it has been shown that this species' chicks secrete a repellent scent when predators threaten. The repellent protects great spotted cuckoo chicks themselves as well as the host's chicks from predators. Carrion crow (Corvus corone corone) chicks survive better if a great spotted cuckoo chick shares their nest. Birds of prey and feral cats less frequently prey on crow's nests that include a great spotted cuckoo chick. Crow chicks benefit only when predators are very active; when there is less predation, losing food to great spotted cuckoo chicks harms the crow chicks without compensation.
Conservation
- Population trend
- stable
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
Other Birds
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Philydor atricapillus
Medium-sized foliage-gleaner with a strong head pattern. Uniformly warm rufous apart from a black cap and pale check patch framed by two black lines. Found in humid lowland forests where it usually accompanies mixed-species flocks and forages at all levels. The song is a loud descending trill; also gives metallic “priew” notes.
Slaty-backed Thrush
Geokichla schistacea
An unmistakable black, white, and gray thrush. Gray upperparts and black head marked with bold white cheek patch and long white eyebrow. Throat and chest black and belly clean white, peppered with black spots on the upper part. Occurs in forest, where it forages on the ground but often perches in trees just below the canopy, particularly when singing. Confined to the Tanimbar Islands. Complex song is a sequence of melodious whistled stanzas, mostly upslurred at the start, and interspersed with quick “chew-chew-chew” phrases.
Southern Bentbill
Oncostoma olivaceum
A tiny well-named flycatcher with a distinctive bent bill like a broken nose. It is olive-green above with paler yellowish underparts. Note the pale gray eyes. Inconspicuous; typically seen singly in the understory of lowland forest, edge, and second-growth. Best detected by trilling calls. Occurs from Panama to Colombia; no range overlap with similar Northern Bentbill.
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