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13

Oriental Cuckoo (Cuculus optatus) Alternate name(s): "Horsfield's Cuckoo", "Blyth's Cuckoo", "Saturated Cuckoo", "Hawk-cuckoo" German name(s): "Horsfieldkuckuck" Size: 28-33 cm; wing span 51-57 cm Weight: 75-130 g

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Similar species

Description     Classification     Distribution     Sightings     Photos     Breeding     Nest     Eggs     Behaviour     Food     Call/s

Physical description Click here for a physical description Oriental Cuckoos are large cuckoos. They have a grey head, throat, chest and mantle. The belly, vent and undertail coverts are boldly barred dark-grey on white. The wings are dark-grey, with near-black flight feathers. The undertail is mostly dark-grey, with some white edge lining. The eyes are surrounded by yellow eye-rings. Males always grey. Grey-morphology females have a rufous-tinged foreneck. Some females can have an hepatic (rufous) morphology, with a chest scalloped in shades of rufous-brown, and the head and back, including the wings, in shades of brown and dark-brown. All Oriental Cuckoos have yellowish irises, a black bill with a yellow lower base and orange legs and feet (the legs and feet may be paler, more yellowish, in hepatic females). The wings have the narrow white leading edge on the shoulders typical of many cuckoo species.

Taxonomy, classification See Oriental Cuckoo at Wikipedia .

Range, habitat, finding this species Click here for information on habitat and range The overall distribution of this species can be assessed, and specific locations where birds have been spotted can be found, based on individual sighting reports submitted by birdwatchers to ebird.org . The global distribution of the Oriental Cuckoo is available HERE . Oriental Cuckoos breed in northern Eurasia, mostly eastward of Saint Petersburg, in northern Kazakhstan and Mongolia and also in northern China, Korea and in Japan. Their winter quarters are not well-known, but include Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, New Guinea, western Micronesia, the Solomon Islands and Australia. Only some vagrants reach New Zealand. Oriental Cuckoos are found in Europe only as breeding migrants to the European part of Russia, mostly the Ural mountain range. There are only individual sighting reports from westward of the Urals, one of which in Russia, the other in southern Finland. During the breeding season Oriental Cuckoos spend most of their time in taiga and scrubby forest.

Sightings Click here for sighting information We have not seen an Oriental Cuckoo in Europe yet, but the species has been found in Australia.

Photos

No photos of an Oriental Cuckoo in Europe are available yet, but the species has been photographed in Australia.

These pages are largely based on our own observations and those of our contributors. The structure of these bird pages is explained HERE. For more salient facts on any bird species please refer to a field guide.

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