CUCKOO 11/14 - Little Bronze Cuckoo

 Little Bronze Cuckoo

 

The Little Bronze Cuckoo (Chrysococcyx minutillus) is a species of cuckoo in the Cuculidae family.It is found in Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. This make my 11th cuckoo lifer. The other 3 cuckoos that I wanted are Horsfield's Bronze , Emerald and the Moustached Hawk will be my tougher targets as the former two are vagrant birds. Madi got the Horsfield's in East coast last year what luck!

 

 

 

This is the world's smallest cuckoo,  coming in at 15 cm (6 in). The most telling feature of the little bronze is its red eye ring and beautiful black barring to its front. It has metallic greenish bronze wings. 








However the immature bird can be mistaken for the horsfield's with its forehead and faint eyestripe pale greyish-brown. Chin, throat and upper breast greyish-brown, with no barring. Remaining underparts almost entirely white washed with grey, without any barring though, sometimes, the feathers may be tipped darker
 

 

Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests.  In peninsula Malaysia it more often seen in coastal forest but it can be seen in suburb parks. My sighting is in Ipoh town itself near my family home. It appears that it is a resident at this nearby park as I have seen it last year but no photo as yet then. This time played its call and within the hour it pop out from nowhere. This happened on 2 consecutive morning. Met Bob and Farah from down under who are staying nearby here on "my 2nd home" programme just guessing. They are MNS Perak members now .

Its call is a four-note whistle, the first note long, the next two short, the fourth note sometimes rather longer and drawn out: the whole a melancholy cadence, the notes not quick and regular but slow, uneven, and sounding as though uttered with an effort  describes it as a descending call of 3 to 5 thin, tremulous notes, teu, teu, teu, teu, also a high-pitched, drawn-out trill on a descending scale.

 

A commonly heard call, very like that described by Robinson & Chasen, consists of four high-pitched whistling notes, uttered very fast, the entire sequence lasting just over one second, chi-chi-chi-chew, with a very slight pause immediately before the last note which is longer and on a downward scale. This call is quite variable, sometimes starting with two or three softer chit notes, followed by three louder chi-chi-chi notes and ending with a short downward chit and a random series of soft chit notes.

They take their prey from foliage and from the ground. Mainly insectivorous, their food seems to consist mainly of beetles and caterpillars of species such as butterflies and moths. The bird rubs hairy caterpillars against the perch to get rid it of the numerous hairs.

It has a rather indirect dipping flight like bulbuls and it often calls from the tops of trees.

The Little Bronze Cuckoo is bit of a specialist, and victimises only birds from the genus Gerygone. The local race,  peninsularis, victimises the Golden-bellied Gerygone which is a common garden bird and coastal forest.
 

 

 

 

 

Again It is said a very common cuckoo and can be found in small numbers, mostly in parks, wooded gardens, orchards, overgrown plantations, open areas with scattered trees, secondary scrub, mangroves and along the forest edge, but never in dense primary forests. It has also been recorded in thickets of Melastoma .  More gregarious and lively than the Violet Cuckoo , it is usually seen flying from one place to another or joining mixed hunting parties .......It took me 8 years to shot it though.............