The Habits and Sounds of Cuckoos

No bird is more obvious than the dove. It is a larger bird that likes to sit out on a bare branch or wire and just sleep away the day. If a bird or two suddenly flies across the open sky, it will very often be the dove, and if you're looking for something special, you are left to console yourself with 'It's just a mourning dove.'

When a dove chanted out its slow hollow coo the other day, I was reminded that they had stopped calling. Males have been busy with the duties of helping to raise the first of many summertime broods. That mournful drone of drawn-out notes is not the same as the staccato coo of the rain crow, a sound that has been missing this spring.

With all the rain we have had, it would seem the rain crow, properly called the cuckoo, would be sitting hidden among the lush leaves cooing constantly. A black-billed cuckoo has been heard every year across the street from the house, and one June the rarer yellow-billed cuckoo sang as well.

It has not happened this spring, and one reason might be that the hairy caterpillars are scarce here this year. These delicacies are the favorite food of the shy cuckoo, and the bird makes his home where he finds them. If tent caterpillars and gypsy moths are in short supply, the cuckoo goes elsewhere to find them.

Even when such food is plentiful and the cuckoos are around, they are harder to see than doves. They rarely venture out into the open, preferring the recesses of the darkest thicket or deepest forest to the more exposed places. When they do fly above the canopy, falcons find the slow flying cuckoo an easy catch.

Cuckoos and doves are the same size and have the same warm brown back, but the cuckoo is white underneath with a longer tail, spotted below. The size and pattern of the spots is one of the ways you can distinguish between the black and yellow-billed cuckoos. The other is the bill color, which for either cuckoo is longer and more curved than the dove's dinky beak.

When the cuckoo makes an appearance, then you know it is a special time, as when the mechanical bird pops out of closed doors and announces each hour. The cuckoo in the clock is named after a European species, which is the same size with the same general form, but there the resemblance ends. The European cuckoo is otherwise known for its habit of laying eggs in another bird's nest, letting foster parents raise their young the same way our cowbird does.

Our cuckoos do not use this parasitic reproductive system. They build a nest as most species do, and raise their own young, often in old orchards where caterpillars like to dine. They arrive later in May, since they have a long way to come from South America, where they spend the colder months. They also tend to nest late, which may be another reason why few have been heard calling during a decidedly cold, delayed spring.

The black-billed cuckoo is more common in New England and its normal call is three fast, repeated coos with a short pause between each set. You will hear this call often if the bird is around and courting, but the cuckoo is furtive and shy, never popping out when he sings, but sitting quietly in the deep shade.

A special hour did arrive a week ago in North Carolina, when the yellow-billed cuckoo appeared to our admiring eyes. For several birders in our group it was a life bird, and it showed off by sitting on an open branch like a dove, its white throat pulsing with the long series of coo notes. The tone of the yellow-billed song is more throaty and deep than the black-billed, and he tends to go on and on as this bird did.

If especially aroused, the cuckoo is liable to break out into a raucous hollow cackling, similar to a jungle bird. The yellow-billed is much more prone to do this, but this bird's song was discrete and subdued. To get such a rare look at the secretive cuckoo is a treat enough. I would be happy just to hear one coo to me around here sometime soon.