This article is about Diederik cuckoo (Chrysococcyx caprius). I wrote it for two reasons: to talk a bit about beauty of this amazing bird and to illustrate something about these birds biology. They are more than just pretty colours. Diederik cuckoo are inter-African migrants that are coming back to SA around now (October), and their breeding season is about to get started. So it is a good time to learn something about them.
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Diederik cuckoo gets its name from and onomatopoeic rendition of its persistent and loud deed-deed-deed-deed-er-ick,in a sweet, but loud voice, call of the territorial male, which you hear often in Johannesburg during the summer. There is a pair that regularly visit our garden and the male is often heard calling in early morning from a large tree in the front yard. The specific name caprius is thought to be a misprint for either cuprea (coppery) or capensis (of Cape of Good Hope), but I like to think it is cuprea, because the birds – especially females and juveniles – often show coppery colours.
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Diederik cuckoo are brood parasites, that is, the female lays its eggs in the nest of a host species, and then leaves the host(s) to raise the chick to fledging. Hosts are mainly weavers and bishops including widowbirds, but they can also parasitise the nests of a number of small birds. In South Africa, 24 host species are known, with the most common being Cape Sparrow, Southern Masked Weaver, Cape Weaver, Village Weaver, Red Bishop, and Cape Wagtail.
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Diederik cuckoo males and females have a particularly distinct ritual feeding behaviour. After sighting a female, a male will court the female with song, and then he will fetch her a caterpillar. During this ritual feeding, the male and female engage in a vigorous dance of bobbing up and down with wings partially spread. Presumably not all such encounters are successful, but I have not observed one that wasn’t so I don’t know what the outcome would be. In a successful encounter, the caterpillar is passed from the male to the female, with an extended time – several seconds – when both birds hold one end of the caterpillar. Eventually the male lets go, and may fly off to fetch another. I have not managed to see them copulating yet, but when they do, the female flies off to lay a single egg in a host nest.
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Host birds are not unaware of the Diederik cuckoo, and will often mob them en mass. I saw this in Rietvlei where the photos were taken, and it was what led me to park next to the dead tree. I saw that the southern masked weavers often chased the cuckoos away, and they went to perch in the dead tree. It is known that sometimes a cuckoo is killed by his mobbing, especially by the southern masked weaver.
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Sexual selection of this bird may not be the only selection pressure leading to dimorphism in cuckoos. For example, recent studies have shown that female plumage became more cryptic with the evolution of brood parasitism. The degree to which this generalisation applies to the Diederik cuckoo is not known. We Homo sapiens, and many other mammals, probably also have characteristics that arose from sexual selection by female choice. In our case, sexual selection may even have played a role in the evolution of intelligence. It may also be that human traits such as humour, music, visual art, verbal creativity, and some forms of altruism, are courtship adaptations that have been favoured through sexual selection. So know your birds, know yourself.
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The genus name Chrysococcyx is Greek for gold cuckoo (χρυσός, κούκος) The specific name caprius is thought to be a misprint for either cuprea (coppery) or capensis (of Cape of Good Hope). The English name is an onomatopoeic rendition of its call. If you like this article, Please share on facebook with your friends and family.