Birds in Profile: Black-billed Cuckoo

Black-billed Cuckoo

Some birds really ruffle my feathers.  Starlings will devour my suet before my woodpeckers even have a chance to get some grub.  Cowbirds lay their eggs in other birds' nests, threatening the survival of the host bird's brood.  The birds that really make me crazy, however, are the ones that I can not find.  They really tick me off.

For a while my nemesis bird was the Blue Grosbeak.  Thanks Greg Miller I was able to add that beauty to the Big List.  My current challenge: The Black-billed Cuckoo.

Many of you, mainly my friends who care little about birds, may be thinking, "He's totally making this up.  There aren't any Cuckoo birds in Northwest Ohio."  On the contrary, there are two species of Cuckoo that reside in the area during the summer months.  The more chatty and less elusive Yellow-billed Cuckoo is already on the list.  The Black-billed differs with the Yellow-billed in that it has a black bill (duh!), a red eye ring surrounding a black eye, a smooth monochromatic brown on the back of the head, neck and back, and has noticeably less white on the underside of the tail.  Yellow-billed's have a rufous colored patch on the wings in place of that smooth solid brown.

Cuckoos are a group of birds that are often heard but not seen.  They're very elusive creatures who move methodically from branch to branch.  I often hear Yellow-billed Cuckoos at Oak Openings, but have yet to hear the Black-billed.  Here's a short clip from YouTube that shows a Black-billed Cuckoo half-heartedly calling out.  When they really get going these birds can seem like they don't require oxygen to breath.  They go on and on and on...



When I've done these little bird vignettes in the past I always visit the Cornell Lab's All About Birds page.  It's a great place to get some very useful information about birds.  My favorite thing from this resource is the "Cool Facts" section.  Here they are for the Black-billed Cuckoo:

• Cuckoos eat many spiny caterpillars and the spines stick in the lining of the stomach.  The stomach lining periodically sheds to remove the spines.

• The apparent tendency to call more frequently before rain explains why both Black-billed and Yellow-billed Cuckoos are called "Rain Crows."

• The Black-billed Cuckoo is known occasionally to lay eggs in the nest of other bird species.

• The time from egg laying to young leaving the nest is, at 17 days, among the shortest for any bird.  Despite this speed, most pairs raise only one brood a year.

On that last point, Kenn Kaufman points out in Lives of North American Birds, that Black-billed Cuckoos may lay more eggs in a season depending on the abundance of caterpillars.

Speaking of Kenn Kaufman, I enlisted his expertise for this post.  For you non-birders who don't know Mr. Kaufman, he is an authority on birds in general.  He has been a bird brain for decades.  The Kaufman Field Guides are arguably the most useful quick reference material a birder can have.  He writes in various publications including Birds and Bloom.  He also happens to be married to Kimberly Kaufman, the unbelievably hard working executive director of the Black Swamp Bird Observatory.  Together, the Kaufman's have done wonders for birding in our area and around the world.  And like everyone else I have mentioned throughout the year, they happen to be really nice people.

Since I have been having such a tough time finding a Black-billed Cuckoo, I asked the expert a few key questions.  Is their a particular time of the day (or night) when they are most likely to call?  Do they usually sit at a particular height?  In Northwest Ohio, where are you most likely to see them?

Kenn gave me some great, but slightly depressing news in that it seems very possible that Black-billed Cuckoo might be one bird that might slip by me this year.  He stated that Black-billed Cuckoos are really tough to find in the summer.  Yellow-billed's will continue to call throughout the summer, but Black-billed's seem to quiet down after the spring migration and the early summer period.  He also said that they have a tendency to sit quietly at mid-levels in trees, especially in dense willows near marshes.  Magee Marsh should be a good spot for them, but Mr. Kaufman said that he has never found a single one there in summer.  Based on his response, the Oak Openings area seems to still be my best bet for a Black-billed Cuckoo.  

Kenn said that you really need to have precise locations to find a Black-billed Cuckoo in the summer.  He suggested that I try to catch them as a fall migrant.  There is a three week window in August and September that might afford me the opportunity to get one of these buggers before they fly south for the winter.

I'd like to thank Kenn Kaufman for graciously fielding my questions for this post.  Kenn has a few blogs of his own, and I'd like to highlight one before I go.  This post on his Crane Creek-Magee Birding blog is a very timely article because shorebirding is really going to get hot here in August.  Dad, I know shorebirds aren't your thing.  "They're too hard to identify."  Anything worth while isn't easy pops.  Happy birding everybody!

Information in this post was gleaned from:

Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Black-billed Cuckoo (website). Retrieved from http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-billed_Cuckoo/lifehistory

Kaufman, K. (1996). Lives of North American Birds. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Books