The Interloper

Bird of the Day Series, Social Media Content

This is the Diederik Cuckoo, an 8” bird found in Sub-Saharan Africa and the northern Arabian Peninsula, and first identified in 1780. It moves with the rains and has been found as far north as Cyprus; it summers in Oman, and lives in open woodland, savanna and riverside bushes.

These are noisy birds, persistently calling out with a plaintive and loud deed-deed-deed-deed-er-ick. They usually do this while flying and gliding about, tail feathers spread. 

This Cuckoo lives on termites, grasshoppers and beetles, but its favourite food is the hairy caterpillar—the kind that is poisonous to all other bird species. To attract a female, the male sings and then, it catches a caterpillar for her. They dance, by bobbing their wings up and down, then the male passes the caterpillar to her. If she picks up the other end and holds it, she has accepted him and they copulate.

The female then finds a nest, usually belonging to a weaver or a sparrow. She destroys any eggs or chicks in that nest, then lays one egg in it. She does this quickly, as she is mobbed and chased off by the nest’s owner who, oddly, doesn’t notice the difference made to the nest. Twelve days later, the cuckoo chick hatches, eats everything else in the nest, and stays there for three weeks, all the while being cared for by foster parents. ‘Strange but true.