The chestnut-winged cuckoo or red-winged crested cuckoo (''Clamator coromandus'') is a

cuckoo Cuckoos are birds in the Cuculidae ( ) family, the sole taxon in the order Cuculiformes ( ). The cuckoo family includes the common or European cuckoo, roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals, and anis. The coucals and anis are somet ...

found in Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia. It has dark glossy upperparts, a black head with long crest chestnut wings, a long graduated glossy black tail, rufous throat dusky underside and a narrow white nuchal half collar. They breed along the

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya ( ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than list of h ...

and migrate south in winter to

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

, southern India and tropical Southeast Asia including parts of Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. It is about long.

Description

This dark and crested cuckoo has chestnut wings, a glossy black crest and a graduated tail (the feathers shortening in steps from the center outwards) whose terminal edges are white and inconspicuous unlike the white tips of the Jacobin cuckoo which is found in parts of its range. The black capping on the head is broken from black of the back by a white collar that extends to the sides of the neck. The lower parts are rufous turning to dark grey towards the vent. Young birds are dusky with a scaly appearance to the wing feathers.

Taxonomy

The species was first given its binomial name by Linnaeus in 1766. His description of what he called ''Cuculus coromandus'' was based on the notes of Brisson who described the bird as "Le coucou hupрé de Coromandel" which was collected on the Coromandel coast of India (probably near Pondicherry which was a French colony). Buffon noticed the close relation to the Jacobin cuckoo and called it "le Jacobin huppé de Coromande". The species was later placed under the genus names of ''Coccystes'', ''Oxylophus'' before being placed in ''Clamator''.

Distribution

The species is found from the western Himalayas to the eastern Himalayas and extends into Southeast Asia. It has been recorded from India, Nepal, China, Indonesia, Laos, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Some populations may be non-migratory. During migration in India, it moves along the Eastern Ghats in its southward migration with exhausted individuals often being discovered in the vicinity of homes. In mid-October, they are found in numbers at Point Calimere, possibly into Sri Lanka. Some appear to winter in the Western Ghats.

Behaviour

This cuckoo sometimes joins mixed species foraging flocks and is usually seen singly. The breeding season is in summer and it is said to lay its eggs mainly in the nest of ''Garrulax'' laughingthrushes, especially ''G. monileger'' and ''G. pectoralis''. The eggs are very spherical. The calls include fluty twin-notes repeated with short intervals.

References

External links

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q262001 chestnut-winged cuckoo Birds of Southeast Asia Birds of Bangladesh Birds of Bhutan Birds of India Birds of Nepal chestnut-winged cuckoo chestnut-winged cuckoo