Channel-billed Cuckoo
Scythrops novaehollandiae
Family: Cuculidae (Old World (Parasitic) Cuckoos, 11 species in Australia).
Size: 60 cm
Distribution: Within 1000-2000 km of the coasts of northern and eastern Australia, as far south as the south of NSW, with a few patches in VIC.
Status: Moderately common
Habitat: Tall trees
References: Simpson and Day, Reader's Digest
The Channel-billed Cuckoo is Australia's largest cuckoo. Like all Australian cuckoos (except for the Pheasant Coucal) it is a nest parasite. That is, it lays its eggs in the nests of other species of birds. When the eggs hatch, the cockoo chicks kill or eject the chicks that belong to the nest. If you see one of these in a tree, usually there will be a whole lot of other birds all hassling it, sometimes quite severely. The Pheasant Coucal is larger, but it is in a different family and it is not a nest parasite.
Photo: Featherdale Wildlife Park, Sydney NSW. High Resolution (2625 x 1998).
Artwork: John Gould, 'The Birds of Australia', 1848. Original Scanned Image.
Some Birdwatching Resources
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NEW: The Australian Bird Guide, by Peter Menkhorst (Author), Danny Rogers (Author), Rohan Clarke (Author), Jeff Davies (Illustrator), Peter Marsack (Illustrator), Kim Franklin (Illustrator). Revised Edition 2019. Original edition published 2017. This is a newer Australian bird field guide that I just got recently. It may be the best one out of all of them now. Though I still like the pictures better in "Simpson and Day" in terms of their artistic value, and that they just look more interesting to me than the drawings in any other bird field guide I've seen. This one has more "clinical" looking pictures. They are coloured artist-rendered drawings, not photographs. Though the more "clinical" look is meant to be more anatomically accurate, and better for identification.
The rest of the book is wonderful, with different coloured regions on the range maps, and very high quality information overall. It was the winner in its category for an Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) award for book of the year in 2018.
Purchase from Australia (Booktopia)
Purchase from Australia (Angus & Robertson)
Purchase from Australia (The Nile)
Purchase from Australia (Fishpond)
Purchase from Amazon.com (USA Site)
Purchase from Amazon.com.au (Australian Site)
| See AlsoAustralian Bird Field Guides
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