Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE CUCKOO-LIKE BIRDS

THE CUCKOOS

(Family Cuculidce)

Taking everything into account, the Cuckoos comprise a very remarkable and interesting group of birds, being for the most part birds of shams and pretenses, and ever seeking to convey the impression that they are other than they really are.

Thus the Drongo-Cuckoo of India so exactly imitates in size, form, and color the King Crow, or Drongo-Shrike, that it is nearly impossible to distinguish them unless held in the hand. Some of the so-called Ground Cuckoos of the Old World imitate Pheasants in gait and plumage, while others are hardly to be distinguished from the smaller Toucans, and still others resemble small Hawks, and take advantage of the resemblance also. In Central America the so-called Squirrel Cuckoos (Piaya) strikingly resemble squirrels as they scurry along limbs and jump from tree to tree. In notes, too, they often imitate other birds, and Mr. Whitehead especially speaks of a Cuckoo found by himself in North Borneo that had notes like those of a certain Barbet, and, he adds,”I have often stalked the supposed Barbet and shot a Cuckoo."
But the resemblance of plumage, voice, and habits between Cuckoos and other birds by no means exhausts their peculiarities.

The paternal instinct, which is usually so highly developed in birds, is at a very low plane in the Cuckoos, since in perhaps a majority of the species the birds do not male and are parasitic, that is, they deposit their eggs in the nests of other birds and permit their young to be reared by foster parents.

And even the young seem to be born with traits which, if developed in a human being, would brand him with the mark of Cain, for more than once have they been observed to push a foster brother over the edge of the nest!

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