22: Black-billed Cuckoo

I write to you from Arapahoe, Ute, and Cheyenne land. I am interested in learning about the different animals that live in the place where I was born. I want to mention that biological classification as taught by western science has its roots in racism, sexism, and transphobia – here’s a good explainer about why.

Today’s animal is the Black-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus erythropthalmus) whose name in Latin means red-eyed cuckoo. So now you know what it looks like – black-billed and red-eyed! These birds travel to east of the Rocky Mountains as far north as Alberta to mate and raise their young before migrating as far south as Colombia/Venezuela and possibly even Bolivia in the winter. What a range!

When east of the Rockies, they look for dense woodlands near trees to make their homes. In Colorado, they live in the northeastern corner of the state. The Audubon Society and Cornell Ornithology Lab describe this bird as “furtive” and “secretive” respectively but that seems like a human problem. These guys primarily love to eat caterpillars.

Unlike many species of cuckoo, they are not usually brood parasites, but instead make their own nests (most of the time). They will resort to brood parasitism in years of abundant resources, with the female popping on over to someone else’s nest in the afternoon to lay an egg.

Here’s a thing I had no idea about: cuckoos and roadrunners are in the same family! I never would have guessed that. There are nine New World cuckoos, of which only two, the black-billed and yellow-billed, migrate into North America – the rest stay in Central and South.