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with Phyllis Yochem
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Tuesday, May 9, 2000
What was that masked bird? A mangrove cuckoo, rarely seen in this area
Infrequent visitor shuns spotlight both in flight and while perching and dining on hairy caterpillars
By some unfathomable coincidence, a very rare bird sat down last week, the day after the rains, in the yard of local birders who were unusually well-prepared to recognize it. The birders were ornithologists Robert and Karen Benson. Benson is professor of bioacoustics at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. His wife is a trained biologist. Together, they have made recordings of bird sounds of Texas.
The rare bird, a mangrove cuckoo, is a Mexican relative of the yellow-billed cuckoo which is commonly seen here in migration. Its throat and underparts are washed entirely with pinkish buff instead of white as they are in the yellow-billed, and it lacks the rufous primaries (long wing feathers) also found in yellow-billed. It wears a black mask and its upper parts, head and back, are grayish brown. Feathers of the long, black tail have large white spots on the underside. Like all cuckoos, it has two toes pointing forward and two pointing back.
There are two subspecies of mangrove cuckoo. The Bensons'bird is a Coccyzus minor continentalis. A Florida subspecies, C.m.maynardi, has a pale throat. The Checklist of the Birds of Texas, published by the Texas Ornithological Society, says that the mangrove cuckoo is a very rare visitor in the Lower Rio Grande Valley and cites six accepted recorded visits. The third edition of the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America says continentalis is an accidental vagrant along the Gulf Coast, from Mexico to northwest Florida. A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America by Howell and Webb, shows the bird as a nesting resident of both the Gulf and Pacific coasts of Mexico.
Members of the cuckoo family are characteristically shy. They are "sneaky Petes," preferring to sit concealed in foliage while they dine on hairy caterpillars, beetles, grasshoppers, and best of all, webworms. They fly like an undercover man shadowing a cheating spouse, backs curved to make themselves as unnoticeable as possible, they slip out of one tree and glide into the thickest part of another.
Often the best way to locate a cuckoo is by its unmistakable call, an accelerating cuck-cuck-cuck finished off with a kowlp, kowlp, kowlp. This call sometimes occurs more frequently before a shower and is the reason cuckoos are sometimes referred to as rain crows. The call of the mangrove cuckoo is similar to that of the yellow-billed, except slower.
At the Bensons' home on Idylwood Drive, the bird was observed feeding on an anacahuita tree and on tallows and other trees in their yard, and on Rio Vista nearby. For updates on sightings call the Coastal Bend Rare Bird Alert at (361) 883-7140.
Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi
resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.
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