Birding Notes

Halfway up a small hill this morning, I had stopped to look up at a gentle blue and white sky, when a bird with a long narrow tail and broad wings flew low and straight as an arrow over me, and disappeared into the top of a tall old tree only a few yards away. As it flew over, all I could see of it was a dark silhouette, with a hint of filmy cinnamon color filtering through its wings.

But its shape was distinctive – it had to be a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. A moment after it settled in the treetop, it called a bright, percussive kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-cawp-cawp-cawp-cawwp-cawwp, from its hidden spot, as if to say hello. 

A Yellow-billed Cuckoo is among our most exotic summer birds, a tall, slender, very elegant bird with a taupe-brown head, face and upper side, wings touched lightly with cinnamon, a smooth, cream-white neck, breast and belly, and a long narrow tail with a spectacular pattern on its underside of big white spots on black. The long yellow bill curves down. 

Although it’s so sleek in appearance, with a tail that seems designed to attract attention, a Yellow-billed Cuckoo is seldom seen here in the summer, and many people never even realize it’s around. It spends most of its time in the highest parts of tall trees, hunting quietly for prey – especially for caterpillars. It will also eat katydids, cicadas, crickets and other insects, and sometimes even frogs and lizards. It doesn’t flit and flutter around like a smaller bird. It moves very deliberately, slowly through the branches, taking its time. But every now and then it stops to give one of its unusual knocking or echoing calls, sounding more like a bird found in the deep, jungle-like tropics than here in an ordinary, wooded suburban neighborhood.

Although I didn’t see it in detail or closeup this morning, the Cuckoo was my favorite bird of the day. I’m always happy to know that one’s around, and we’ve been lucky enough this season to have at least one or two that I hear calling at some point almost every day, in the trees that surround our back yard.