Birdpass
English
Common Cuckoo

Common Cuckoo

Cuculus canorus

Identify the Common Cuckoo by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

  • Download on the App Store
  • Get it on Google Play

The Common Cuckoo is a slim, long-tailed, hawk-like cuckoo that spends the summer across Europe and much of Asia and winters in Africa. It is famous for the male's two-note “cuck-oo” call and notorious as a brood parasite, laying its eggs in the nests of smaller birds such as Redstarts, pipits, Dunnocks and reed warblers, with eggs that mimic those of the host. The host parents raise the cuckoo chick, which ejects their own eggs.

Did you know?

  • The name imitates the male's call and appears in the 13th-century song Sumer Is Icumen In.
  • Its hawk-like barring can make small birds hesitate, giving the female time to lay.

Voice

Song
Call

About the species

Identification

A slim, long-tailed bird. The back, head and breast are usually grey and the belly white with dense black bars. Females often occur in a rufous morph. In flight it resembles a small falcon or hawk, but the wingbeats are even and flickering, and the wings do not rise above the body; it glides only briefly. The male is revealed by his two-note call, while the female's call is a rapid bubbling.

Family

Cuculidae

Size

Medium (thrush)

Colours

grey, white, black, yellow

About the habitat

Many semi-open habitats: forest edges and clearings, farmland mosaics, reedbeds, moorland, bogs and mountain birch zones.

Diet

Mainly insects, especially hairy caterpillars that most birds avoid, as well as beetles, flies and grasshoppers; occasionally eggs of other birds.

Behaviour

Females watch host nests from cover and slip in to lay a single egg in seconds. Males call from exposed perches with drooping wings, while the female gives a bubbling call. Flight is level and direct. Its sparrowhawk-like barring may help it approach host nests. Strongly migratory.

Sources

Photo: Andy Morffew from Itchen Abbas, Hampshire, UK, CC BY 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cuckoo (51169010335).jpg

Sound: Benoît Van Hecke, XC546155, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/546155

Sound: Alexander Kurthy, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cuculus_canorus_-_Common_Cuckoo_XC108332.mp3

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions + Wikipedia (Finnish), CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0; Wikipedia: CC BY-SA 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cuckoo

See also