Dan's Feathursday Feature: Yellow-billed Cuckoo

It happened again today.

I woke at dawn to clouds so thick the sun must have seen them and just decided not to rise. I felt about the same. Damp breeze, with thunderstorms predicted for mid-morning, a good day to sleep in. Besides, the park I regularly walk—long, mostly open, flat—is not a fun place to be when a storm rolls in off Lake Michigan. Earlier this same week I had to huddle for almost an hour in a low spot among some sumac while a thunderstorm rumbled by. I don't mind getting wet, but lightning scares me.

So I almost rolled over and went back to sleep. But then the self-motivational quotes kicked in: "Nothing ventured, nothing gained," "No guts, no glory," "You wimp!"... Enough already. I slid out of bed, washed my face and decided to see whether even on a day like today the early bird would get the bird.

He did. Or I did. At least a photo of the bird. Only a half hour into my walk, I was amazed to spot a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. That mostly open park, with just a few trees around the edges, is not a place I expected to find a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. But there it was, waiting for me in a very unusual location, in a lone cottonwood along the barren lakefront.

And I would have missed the encounter if I had listened to my pillow and gone back to bed. Once again, those pithy personal pep talks paid off.

Normally, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo is a furtive bird that hangs out in dense woodlands, where it can be very hard to spot. Even though this morning's bird was in a lone tree, it hid so well that I was very lucky to spot it. It's about the size of a Mourning Dove, but with a longer tail; and its flight is more fluid and quiet. It loves tent caterpillars and cicadas, so I think the cuckoos have managed to eat very well this summer.

Fortunately, I made it back to the car before a 9am downpour, as lightning over the lake was drawing closer to shore. At home, reading up on the cuckoo, I learned an interesting Yellow-billed Cuckoo tidbit. It is nicknamed the "Rain Crow" because of its habit of calling out at the sound of thunder. If I had known that while out in the field, I probably would have hunkered down under that tree to wait out the storm and see if it was true. Anyway, now I have one more good reason to get up and out in the field even in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Dan's Feathursday Feature is a regular contribution to the COS blog featuring the thoughts, insights and pictures of Chicago birder, Dan Lory on birds of the Chicago region.