The cuckoo bird's environment tends to be predominantly temperate, forested, and tropical regions. There is a great diversity of cuckoo species in the tropics of the Old Continent and they live mainly among the canopies of dry leaves.
To establish themselves they usually look for hollow and clear spaces in the wooded regions. The cuckoo bird, belonging to the Cuculidae family, usually has a length of about 16 cm.
They are thin birds and, for the most part, they have gray and brown shades in their plumage, and some of them even have white or reddish patches, or bright flashes.
To date, more than 59 species of cuculidaes are known. Most species live in trees, although a sizeable minority live on land.
This species tends to have a timid behavior in thick vegetation, and are characterized by their particular song, which we can relate to the time stamp on the “Cuckoo” clocks; the above, by the name of the cuckoo bird in English: Cuckoo Bird.
In the West, this species is rare and its presence is limited to forests dominated by poplars that border large rivers, which generally run through an arid country.
However, some species are migratory, and given their nature, they tend to have the longest wings, conditioned by their life dynamics.
As a group, cuckoos are forest birds, often inhabiting dense thickets that can make them difficult to observe. Some species, like many of the genus Cuculus, tend to be open woodlands.
The guira (Guira guira) of South America and many members of the European and Asian genera, such as the Clamator and Chrysococcyx, are found in the open savanna (prairie), but only where vegetation is present.
Roadrunners live in the open scrub and desert of the cactus, often in the absence of any large vegetation.
One of the most representative characteristics of the cuckoo bird is the habit of parasitism of the young, predominant in most of these species.
This consists of putting the eggs of their young in the nests of other species of birds, so that these eggs are incubated by a kind of foster parents.
The young of the cuckoo bird has the ability to blend in with the eggs of the nest in which they are brooding; that is, she manages to fool the “foster parents” into thinking she is one of them.
One day the cuckoo chick breaks the shell and as soon as possible it throws the others to the ground and takes over the nest.
Given the wooded environment where they usually live, cuckoo birds feed on insects or insect larvae, especially hairy caterpillars and grasshoppers; They also like to eat wild fruits.
Thanks to the characteristics of the forest ecosystems where it develops, the cuckoo bird has managed to maintain itself over time and diversify according to the particularities of the geographical area in which it is found.
With which, we can ensure that this bird is present, in its various variants, anywhere in the world.
References
- Cornell University (2015). Yellow-billed Cuckoo. Ithaca, New York. Recovered from allaboutbirds.org
- Ecured (2015). Cuckoo. Havana Cuba. Recovered from ecured.cu
- Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (2017) London, England. Cuckoo Bird. Recovered from britannica.com
- Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (2017) London, England. Cuculiform Bird Order. Recovered from britannica.com.
- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (2017). Cuckoo. Recovered from en.wikipedia.org.