Black-billed cuckoo

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Black-billed cuckoo
Black-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus erythropthalmus)

Black- billed cuckoo ( Coccyzus erythropthalmus )

Systematics
Class : Birds (aves)
Order : Cuckoo birds (Cuculiformes)
Family : Cuckoos (Cuculidae)
Genre : Coccyzus
Type : Black-billed cuckoo
Scientific name
Coccyzus erythropthalmus
( A. Wilson , 1811)
Representation of the black- billed cuckoo ( back) and the very similar yellow-billed cuckoo (front)

The black- billed cuckoo ( Coccyzus erythropthalmus ) is a species from the family of cuckoo birds that occurs exclusively in the New World. It only breeds in the northeast of North America , but overwinters in South America during the winter half-year . During its fall and spring migration , it can also be seen in Central America , Mexico and the southern United States . The black-billed cuckoo, which lives very secretly, is a medium-sized, slender and long-tailed cuckoo that is mostly hidden in the foliage.

In contrast to a number of species within the cuckoo, the black-billed cuckoo mostly raises its offspring itself. As a facultative breeding parasite , however, it occasionally lays eggs in the nests of host birds.

As Irrgast the Manx cuckoo was until 2007 thirteen times in the UK and one in Ireland observed.

Due to the size of the distribution area and the frequency of the species, the IUCN does not assume any threat.

features

The black-billed cuckoo reaches a body length of 27 to 31 centimeters, with an average of 15 centimeters on the tail. The beak has a length of 2.2 centimeters. The males weigh an average of 46 grams, the females are slightly heavier with an average of 54 grams.

There is no pronounced gender dimorphism . In both males and females, the forehead, the upper head, the ear covers, the sides of the neck, the nape and the upper side of the body as well as the upper side of the wings and the tail are of a plain brown.

The underside of the hand and arm wings are also brown, while the hand and arm covers are white. The underside of the body is white and washed out gray on the throat, chin and front chest. The control springs are gray-brown on the underside and whitish at the end. The iris is dark brown, the eye ring is red during the breeding season and yellowish outside the breeding season. The beak is slightly curved and black in color.

Fledglings are similar to adult birds, but are more reddish-brown on the top of their bodies. The iris is yellow in them, the beak rather blue-gray. The nestlings weigh 7.5 grams when they hatch and have black skin.

The black- billed cuckoo is very similar to the yellow-billed cuckoo . They are similar in their body plumage, but the adult yellow-billed cuckoo, unlike the black-billed cuckoo, has a yellow beak and often a yellow eye ring.

Distribution area

Breeding area and wintering areas of the black-billed cuckoo.

The black-billed cuckoo breeds exclusively in North America. The breeding area extends east of the Rocky Mountains in a broad band across southern Canada and the northern United States. Their breeding area just extends to the north of the US states of North Carolina , Arkansas , Oklahoma and Tennessee . In Canada, they are found as breeding birds in the southern states of Alberta , Saskatchewan , Manitoba , Ontario and Quebec .

During the fall and spring migration, they can also be found in the southern US states as well as Mexico and Central America. Autumn migration begins in Canada in late August through September and begins in the United States in October and November. Black-billed cuckoos can be seen during migration in Texas, for example in September and October and April and May, respectively. These cuckoo birds reach Panama in September to November or in late March to the beginning of May.

Black-billed cuckoos have their important wintering areas in eastern Peru and Bolivia. Thick-billed cuckoos have also been observed sporadically in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.

habitat

The black-billed cuckoo inhabits a number of very different habitats. They are most often found on the edge of old deciduous and mixed forests, but they are rare in forests that are predominantly coniferous. They also use young forests if they have many bushes and thick ones. Wetlands and marshland, which have a dense population of alders and willows, are another typical habitat for them. But they also colonize anthropogenically transformed habitats such as abandoned agricultural areas, golf courses and extensive parks. Regardless of the habitat, however, they are rarely seen. They stay mainly in the dense foliage. Another characteristic of their habitats is their proximity to fresh water: this can be a lake, a river, marshland or a pond.

In their wintering areas they are rarely found at altitudes above 900 meters. During the move, however, they can also be seen at significantly higher altitudes. They have already been observed at 1,600 meters above sea level in Colombia and at 2,400 meters above sea level in Peru. In their wintering areas they can be found in the grasslands, in dry Andean valleys and in the forests of the Amazon region.

Way of life

The black-billed cuckoo lives alone or in pairs, and during migration they are often associated with other migratory birds.

food

Black-billed cuckoo next to a web of caterpillars

The food of the black-billed cuckoo consists of slow-moving leaf locusts and caterpillars. It also eats a number of forest pests such as gypsy moth , American weaver and single-point reed owls . Beetles, cicadas and spiders are also part of the food spectrum. It also occasionally eats small fish and frogs, as well as eggs from other birds. During the winter months it also eats fruits and seeds.

It looks for its food mainly in trees, only occasionally it comes to the ground. It often moves very inconspicuously in the foliage and withstands movements of prey. He often hits caterpillars, which are among his most important prey, against branches in order to remove the intestinal contents. Like all cuckoos, it eats very hairy caterpillars, which are avoided by most other bird species. The hair is collected in the stomach and regurgitated as a ball of spits. In the forests of the Amazon as well as in its wintering areas in Peru, it often searches for food in flocks of different bird species.

Breeding season and courtship

Reproduction occurs between May and September, with both regional and annual variations. Southern populations, for example, arrive in the breeding areas one to two weeks earlier and leave them one to two weeks after the birds that breed in the more northerly range. However, the actual breeding season is significantly influenced by the food available.

The male mates around the female by offering her caterpillars in her beak. Mating takes only a few seconds and takes place on a branch near the nest. Occasionally, there are repeated pairings during the incubation period.

Nest and eggs

Black-billed cuckoo, back side

The nest is a fragile platform made of twigs, twigs, plant stems, bark and small roots, which is laid out with leaves, pine needles and other plant material. It is usually erected on a horizontal branch of a tree or shrub. The nest is usually no higher than 0.5 to 0.6 meters above the ground. Black-billed cuckoos very rarely breed directly on the ground. It is assumed that both parent birds are involved in building the nest.

The full clutch usually comprises two to four eggs. But there are also clutches with up to eight eggs. It is assumed that in this case foreign females also laid eggs in the nest. The eggs are dull greenish blue. The female usually lays eggs in the morning and is usually about two days apart. Laying intervals of one to three days have also been observed.

The eggs usually start to incubate when they are first laid. Both parent birds are involved in the brood. They sit on the eggs for about 90 minutes on average. The breeding season lasts 10 to 11 days.

Fledglings

Young birds of the black-billed cuckoo

The hatching of the nestlings is largely synchronous. Newly hatched nestlings are between six and seven centimeters long and weigh an average of 7.5 grams. They are initially blind, their eyes open on the second day of life. They are begging for food with their necks stretched forward and wings outstretched. They make begging noises. They are fed both hairy and hairless caterpillars, keepers of the grail and other insects. Both parent birds are involved in feeding.

On their seventh day of life they are already fully feathered, from then on they also start to leave the nest. On the ninth day of life, all young birds are usually outside the nest and are only able to fly from the age of 21 to 23. It moves in the branches during its inability to fly with the help of its beak.

According to individual studies, 55 percent of all eggs turn into fledglings.

Facultative Brood Parasitism

Black-billed cuckoo, often difficult to spot in the foliage

The black-billed cuckoo occasionally also lays eggs in the nests of other bird species. These are often the nests of other black-billed cuckoos, which occasionally leads to clutches of up to eight eggs. As a host bird it also occasionally uses other bird species. The most common parasitic species are the yellow-billed cuckoo, the American bluebird , the cat thrush , the swarming bird and the wood thrush . A parasitism by the black -billed cuckoo has also been observed in the golden warbler , cedar waxwing , Wilson thrush and yellow-breasted warbler .

In the black-billed cuckoo, certain characteristics can occasionally be observed, as they also occur in the obligatory brood parasites: The black-billed cuckoo prefers to parasitize species that have a certain similarity to the eggs of the host bird (75% of all observed cases). Nestlings of the black-billed cuckoo, which grew up in the nest of a Schwirrammer, threw the nestlings of their host birds out of the nest. In the nests of the gold warbler, the nestlings of the black-billed cuckoo proved to be more assertive: here the nestlings of the host bird starved to death.

The black-billed cuckoo is occasionally parasitized by its sister species, the yellow-billed cuckoo. The brown-headed cowbird , a brood parasite that spread in North America in the course of the 20th century, also lays eggs in the nests of the black-billed cuckoo.

Persistence and Threat

Cuculus erythropthalma (Figure 2) Lithograph by Alexander Wilson as part of the first description

The black-billed cuckoo is a common bird in large parts of its breeding area, it is less common in the south of the breeding area. Despite this, there was a population decline in large parts of its breeding area, which was particularly noticeable in the 1980s and 1990s. In general, however, the black-billed cuckoo population is not considered to be threatened.

The predators of the black- billed cuckoo include hawks and sparrowhawks as well as the aplomado falcon . The eggs of the Black-billed cuckoo occasionally by snakes and chipmunks eaten.

Etymology and history of research

Alexander Wilson described the black-billed cuckoo under the name Cuculus erythropthalma . The type specimen came from Georgia and was discovered by John Abbot (1751-ca. 1840), an artist and naturalist. In 1816 Louis Pierre Vieillot (1748-1830) introduced the new genus Coccyzus for the yellow-billed cuckoo ( Coccyzus americanus ( Linnaeus , 1758)) (corresponds to the Coucou de la Caroline von Brisson ), to which the black- billed cuckoo was later assigned. This name is derived from the Greek kokkyzō , κοκκυζω for 'cuckoo screaming'. The species name erythropthalmus is derived from erythros ερυθρος for 'red' and ophthalmos , οφθαλμος for 'eye'.

literature

  • Jonathan Alderfer (Ed.): Complete Birds of Northamerica. National Geographic, Washington DC 2006, ISBN 0-7922-4175-4 .
  • Johannes Erhitzøe, Clive F. Mann, Frederik P. Brammer, Richard A. Fuller: Cuckoos of the World (Helm Identification Guide) . Christopher Helm, London 2012, ISBN 978-0-7136-6034-0 .
  • Alexander Wilson: American ornithology, or, The natural history of the birds of the United States: illustrated with plates engraved and colored from original drawings taken from nature . 1st edition. tape 4 . Bradford and Inskeep, Philadelphia 1811 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).
  • Louis Pierre Vieillot: Analyze d'une nouvelle ornithologie élémentaire . Deterville, Paris 1816 ( books.google.de ).
  • James A. Jobling: Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names . Christopher Helm, London 2010, ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4 .

Web links

Commons : Black-billed Cuckoo  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Single receipts

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Erhitzøe, Mann, Brammer, Fuller: Cuckoos of the World . P. 303.
  2. ↑ Coccyzus erythropthalmus in the Red List of Endangered Species of the IUCN 2012. Posted by: BirdLife International, 2012. Accessed July 31, 2016.
  3. ↑ a b Erhitzøe, Mann, Brammer, Fuller: Cuckoos of the World . P. 302.
  4. ↑ Erhitzøe, Mann, Brammer, Fuller: Cuckoos of the World . P. 302 and p. 303.
  5. ↑ Hughes JM. [Internet]. (2001). Black-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus erythropthalmus). Ithaca, NY: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; [cited 2016 Jul 30]. Available from: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/587/articles/introduction .
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Erhitzøe, Mann, Brammer, Fuller: Cuckoos of the World . P. 304.
  7. ↑ Alexander Wilson, p. 16, plate 28, figure 2.
  8. ↑ Louis Pierre Vieillot, p. 28.
  9. ↑ James A. Jobling, p. 112.
  10. ↑ James A. Jobling, p. 150.