COVER PICTURE (From a Water-Colour by the late Miss L. A. Daff) LONG-TAILED CUCKOO (Koekoea)

Forest and Bird, Issue 104, 1 May 1952, Page 3

COVER PICTURE (From a Water-Colour by the late Miss L. A. Daff) LONG-TAILED CUCKOO (Koekoea)

Urodynamis taitensis

OF the two species of the cuckoo family that annually visit New Zealand from regions' nearer the Equator, the larger longtailed cuckoo is perhaps less well known than its smaller relative, the shining cuckoo.

This cuckoo’s appearance at once suggests the description “hawk-like,” and it may be this resemblance to a common enemy that arouses the anger of small birds when a koekoea is seen. It has the colour of a hawk but not its beak and feet, and so must seek safety in retreat with the flock of feathered furies in pursuit. It gains revenge in sneaking fashion by visiting unguarded nests to steal and devour eggs and sometimes even nestlings, and as if in final settlement of its score, the cuckoo may then leave its own egg to be cared for by one of the deluded victims.

Bush canaries (the whiteheads of the North Island and the yellowheads of the South) are frequently the foster-parents thus victimised. Native robins are also reported as fosterparents and grey warblers have been seen feeding a young koekoea, but whether these tiny birds have previously fostered the large cuckoo’s egg as they do that of the shining cuckoo is not definitely known.

After many years of doubt and conjecture as to the long-tailed cuckoo’s egg, it has been finally established that it is creamy-white in ground colour with purplish brown markings. During the nesting season the favourite haunts of these birds are mostly away from the haunts of man, but they may be seen even in the neighbourhood of large towns when on migration. In the fresh adult plumage the underparts are white streaked with brown, and the upperparts dark brown spotted and barred with chestnut. In autumn birds in immature plumage are more frequently seen. In these the throat and breast are buff instead of white, while the back is spangled with white spots. Also the tail is a little shorter than in the fullgrown bird. They consume in their first season a prodigious number of insects and spiders. New Zealand is the only known nesting country of the long-tailed cuckoo. In winter the species is found in various islands of the South Pacific from the Solomons in the west to Tahiti in the east. The ancient Maori explained its annual disappearance by saying that the bird shed its feathers in the autumn, turned into a lizard, and crawled into a hole in the ground and spent the winter there. -