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Oriental Cuckoo

Cuculus saturatusOrder: CUCULIFORMESFamily: Cuckoos and Roadrunners (Cuculidae)

Oriental Cuckoo Breeding Male Portrait
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General

Oriental Cuckoo: Medium-sized cuckoo with gray upperparts, gray throat, and distinctly barred breast. Wings and long tail are dark gray. Bill is decurved and yellow with dark tip. Sexes are similar.

Range and Habitat

Oriental Cuckoo: Native of Eurasia, but makes rare visits to the Pribilofs and western Aleutians. Usually found in forests.

Voice Text

"do-do-do-do"

Interesting Facts

  The Oriental Cuckoo is also known as Horsfield's Cuckoo.

 It was formerly classified as a subspecies of the Himalayan Cuckoo but differences in voice and size suggest that it should be treated as a separate species.

 The exact extent of its wintering range is uncertain due to its secretive habits and the difficulty of separating it from the Himalayan Cuckoo and other similar species.

 A group of cuckoos are collectively known as a "cooch" and an "asylum" of cuckoos.



Author

Gary Owen Dick

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Range Map for Oriental Cuckoo
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Bird Call Credits: The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Martyn Stewart, http://www.naturesound.org, Redmond, Washington USA. The reuse or copying of bird calls in this database is strictly forbidden.
Family Roadrunners and Cuckoos (Cuculidae)
Species Cuculus saturatus
Length12 - 13 Inches
Wingspan28 Inches

Oriental Cuckoo

Oriental Cuckoo: Medium-sized cuckoo with gray upperparts, gray throat, and distinctly barred breast. Wings and long tail are dark gray. Bill is decurved and yellow with dark tip. Feeds on caterpillars, insects and their larvae. Flies low to the ground, holds wings low during flight.

● Song: "do-do-do-do"

● Foraging & Feeding: Oriental Cuckoo: Eats insects, including fuzzy caterpillars; forages on the ground or in flight.

● Breeding & nesting: Oriental Cuckoo: Eighteen to twenty-five white eggs with dark red, gray, brown, or purple spots are laid each season, singly placed in nests of host species. Eggs are incubated for 12 days by the host.

● Similar species: Oriental Cuckoo: Common Cuckoo has paler gray upperparts, paler gray underparts, and lacks buff undertail coverts.

Flight Pattern

While flying, keeps wings low, not raising them above the horizontal plane, with deep downstroke ending well below body.
Oriental Cuckoo Breeding Male Body Illustration
● Range & Habitat: Oriental Cuckoo: Native of Eurasia, but makes rare visits to the Pribilofs and western Aleutians. Usually found in forests.
BreedingPromiscuous, Brood parasite
PopulationAccidental to casual
MigrationMigratory
Weight4.1 Ounces