Category Archives: Cuckoo
Channel-billed Cuckoo in our garden
It seems to me that the Channel-billed Cuckoos were late in arriving from their annual migration this year. Some people were pleased about that, as these birds make a tremendous noise in the early morning hours! But I was pleased when I eventually heard their raucous calls earlier this week.
Today, one dropped in on a tree in our garden. As usual, the other birds were harassing it.
Channel-billed Cuckoos are impressive birds. They have fierce red eyes and a large, hooked beak. Like many other types of cuckoos, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds rather than making their own nests. They also leave the task of caring for the young birds to the substitute parents!
This particular cuckoo was a little wet and bedraggled. What with the rain and the harassment of the other birds, the cuckoo doesn’t seem to be enjoying life much.
Common name: Channel-billed Cuckoo
Scientific name: Scythrops novaehollandiae
Approximate length: 58-65 cm
Date spotted: 20 September 2020 (spring)
Location: Allambie Heights, New South Wales, Australia
Song of the Fan-tailed Cuckoo
Walking through the Aussie bush, I’m sometimes intrigued by a musical trill coming from the hidden depths of the forest. The sound starts high and drops rapidly down the scale to a lower pitch. Today, for the first time, I managed to spot the bird that makes this lovely noise: a Fan-tailed Cuckoo:
At first I thought it couldn’t be a cuckoo, because don’t all cuckoos leave for warmer climes when winter arrives on the Australian east coast? Evidently not. For the most part, Fan-tailed Cuckoos brave the cold weather, although those in Tasmania do move north into the mainland.
Here’s the cuckoo caught in mid trill:
Like other cuckoos, these birds lay their eggs in the nests of other species. Fan-tailed Cuckoos choose fairy-wrens and thornbills as their hosts. Such small little parents to raise a cuckoo!
Here’s another shot of the bird, this time with its beak closed:
This particular bird has a lovely rich coloring. Other photos I’ve seen show less orange in the chest feathers, and a lighter grey on the head and back.
Singing again:
Fan-tailed Cuckoos feed on insects. Typical behaviour is to sit high up on a branch then swoop down when a meal crawls or flutters into view. Here’s a non-zoomed-in view of the bird:
Common name: Fan-tailed Cuckoo
Scientific name: Cacomantis flabelliformis
Approximate length: 26 cm
Date spotted: 13 June 2020 (winter)
Location: Manly Dam National Park, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’29.5″S 151°14’46.3″E
Young Channel-billed Cuckoo fed by a currawong
A plaintive caterwauling drew my attention to the treetops this morning. A large bird sat high in a tree, calling and flapping its wings. It was a juvenile Channel-billed Cuckoo, waiting to be fed. As I watched, the adoptive parent arrived: a currawong. The currawong stuffed some food down the baby’s throat:
The baby cuckoo is already larger than its adoptive parent. Channel-billed Cuckoos are very large birds. In fact, they’re the largest of all parasitic birds. The body of the adult is more than half a metre long, and the wingspan is almost a metre. As the term parasitic implies, the cuckoo parents lay their eggs in the nests of other birds—in this case, a currawong’s nest—and the hapless host then raises the cuckoo chick.
In the next video, the young cuckoo is more restful, which gives you a chance to see its colouring. The very young birds have yellowish and brown colouring, whereas adults are light grey and dark grey. This youngster is close to adult colouring, but you can still see yellow here and there. The chirping noise that you hear throughout is the cicada beetles that rule the bush at this time of year.
Near the start of the video, the bird takes a sudden dislike to a dead twig nearby. Who knows why. Perhaps the bird is bored. Then a Noisy Miner arrives to alleviate the boredom. Noisy Miners, also known as Australian Miners, are noisy, as you may have guessed. They broadcast an alert whenever anything unusual appears in their territory. The young cuckoo reacts with alarm. In the nick of time, the host currawong arrives with another tasty treat.
I noticed that the currawong retreats hastily after delivering each morsel of food, and the cuckoo gives chase. I’d probably retreat too if my baby were that size!
Here’s a still photo of the young cuckoo. It’s eyes have not yet reached the dramatic red of the adult Channel-billed Cuckoo:
Bits of yellow and brown are still visible in the feathers, but this young ‘un has nearly attained the grey colouring of the adult.
The next photo gives a good view of the youngster’s tail, which looks to be fully developed. I saw the bird flying from tree to tree, and it did a very good job of it. It will need its flying skills in a few weeks’ time, as these cuckoos are migratory. They come down the eastern coast of Australia in spring, around September, then fly back up north to Indonesia and other islands around March.
To see more pics and videos of these cuckoos, and to hear the horrendous noise the adults make, check out my list of cuckoo posts.
Common name: Channel-billed Cuckoo
Scientific name: Scythrops novaehollandiae
Approximate length: 58-65 cm
Date spotted: 25 January 2020 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam Reserve, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’59.6″S 151°15’15.5″E
Scruffy Channel-billed Cuckoo
Are you often woken up in the early hours of the summer morning by a hoarse hooting noise? It sounds like giants boasting about a joke they’ve played on the world. The call puts the Kookaburras to shame, in terms of melody (lack thereof) and loudness (excess thereof).
That noise is made by the Channel-billed Cuckoos. One of my earlier posts has a recording of the call. This picture shows a rather scruffy-looking example of these birds. It’s probably spent the night out on the town:
Channel-billed Cuckoos spend the winter in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, then migrate southwards to Australia for the summer. We see them in the Sydney area from September through to March each year. The first time I hear their raucous call, I know that spring has arrived.
Like many cuckoos, these birds lay their eggs in the nest of another species. Often, the parent cuckoo breaks the eggs of the host birds. When the young cuckoo hatches, the luckless host parents then feed and protect the cuckoo chick until it’s ready to leave the nest.
Channel-billed Cuckoos are large birds. Their appearance matches their call: Take no nonsense from no-one. Here’s a view of the bird’s head in profile, with that impressive red eye and hooked beak:
To see more pics and videos, check out my list of cuckoo posts.
Common name: Channel-billed Cuckoo
Scientific name: Scythrops novaehollandiae
Approximate length: 58-65 cm
Date spotted: 28 December 2019 (summer)
Location: Manly Dam Reserve, New South Wales, Australia: 33°47’00.6″S 151°15’10.1″E
Male Koel Cuckoo in shot at last
Recently I’ve managed to snap a few shots of female Eastern Koels, also called Common Koels or Koel Cuckoos. Now a male has come into my sights:
While the female is rather pretty, with shades of cream and brown overlaid with stylish spots, the male is primarily black. In fact, this photo shows more variation in colour than usual, because of the soft morning light.
If you’d like to see some shots of the females, or hear some of the cuckoos’ calls, take a look at this list of posts.
Common name: Common Koel or Eastern Koel
Scientific name: Eudynamys scolopacea
Approximate length: 45 cm
Date spotted: 28 December 2018 (Summer)
Location: Allambie Heights, New South Wales, Australia
Koel cuckoos calling
The Koel cuckoos are in town! They were diving through the treetops and calling all round me when I went for a stroll in the bush today. Here’s a picture of one of them – a female:
In the following short video you can hear the cuckoos calling to each other. You can’t actually see any birds:
Common name: Common Koel or Eastern Koel
Scientific name: Eudynamys scolopacea
Approximate length: 45 cm
Date spotted: 25 November 2018 (spring)
Location: Manly Dam National Park, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’56.2″S 151°15’22.5″E
Female Koel cuckoo
Koel cuckoos have been swooping and calling around our house the last couple of days. They arrive in this neck of the woods in spring and head off again for northern climes in autumn. While here, they lay eggs in another bird’s nest and leave it up to the host family to feed the youngster. Typical cuckoo.
This is a female Koel cuckoo. They’re impressive to look at, and quite decorative in contrast to the completely-black male of the species.
An earlier post shows a male Koel cuckoo, and you can play the video in that post to hear their call.
Common name: Common Koel or Eastern Koel
Scientific name: Eudynamys scolopacea
Approximate length: 45 cm
Date spotted: 10 November 2018 (spring)
Location: Allambie Heights, NSW, Australia
Raucous call of Channel-billed Cuckoos
They arrive in south eastern Australia in spring. They’re spooky to look at. In the early hours of the morning, their call puts even the kookaburras to shame.
In this video, you don’t see any birds – it’s too dark – but you can hear them!
Here’s a picture of a Channel-billed Cuckoo from another date:
To see more pics and videos, check out my list of cuckoo posts.
Common name: Channel-billed Cuckoo
Scientific name: Scythrops novaehollandiae
Approximate length: 58-65 cm
Date heard: 22 September 2018 (Spring)
Location: Allambie Heights, NSW, Australia
Koel Cuckoo regurgitates food
Today I spotted a young female Koel Cuckoo. The males are so dark in colour that it’s hard to see them in fine detail. Photographs end up being just a black blob. But this female is quite pretty.
This video shows the bird sitting quietly on the branch, not doing much. At around 20 seconds into the video, she regurgitates some fruit and then swallows it again.
Adult Koel Cuckoos have red eyes, but youngsters can keep the brown colour into their second summer. I thought I glimpsed a glint of red every now and then, but her eyes are still mostly dark brown.
Here’s another side view of her, sheltering behind the foliage:
She decided to stretch her wings. I was behind her at the time, so there’s a lovely view of soft down and the underside of her wings:
Common name: Common Koel or Eastern Koel
Scientific name: Eudynamys scolopacea
Approximate length: 45 cm
Date spotted: 27 November 2016
Season: Spring
Location: Manly Dam Reserve, New South Wales, Australia
Latitude/longitude: 33°46’35.6″S 151°15’16.8″E
Channel-billed Cuckoo fending off Australian Miners
The call of the Channel-billed Cuckoo announces that spring has arrived. These large, ugly, yet splendid birds arrive in Eastern Australia in early spring every year, returning from their seasonal migration to Indonesia and New Guinea.
They’re the largest cuckoos in the world, at a length of around 60 cm and a wingspan of 1 metre. Yet, despite their size, they’re cowed by the little Australian Miner (length 25 cm, wingspan 40 cm). To those who know Australian birds, this isn’t surprising. The Miner, also known as the Noisy Miner, is aggressive and fearless, attacking birds and animals far larger than itself.
In this video you can hear the pesky Australian Miners chirping and heckling, and the cuckoo hissing and groaning in response:
This video shows a couple of Noisy Miners dive-bombing the cuckoo:
Here’s the cuckoo in a moment of quiet contemplation. Note the red eyes and the large, curved beak:
A view of the cuckoo from behind, surrounded by gum tree flowers:
Common name: Channel-billed Cuckoo
Scientific name: Scythrops novaehollandiae
Approximate length: 58-65 cm
Date spotted: 8 October 2016
Season: Spring
Location: Manly Dam National Park, New South Wales, Australia
Latitude/longitude: 33°46’59.1″S 151°15’09.5″E
Sydney Birder 