Saurothera vetula
Silhouette: Nicolas Huet le Jeune and Jean-Gabriel Prêtre (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~70% in a week >90%
The Jamaican lizard cuckoo (Coccyzus vetula) is a species of bird in the tribe Phaenicophaeini, subfamily Cuculinae of the cuckoo family Cuculidae. It is endemic to Jamaica. The Jamaican lizard cuckoo was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Cuculus vetula. Linnaeus cited earlier descriptions by the collector Hans Sloane and the Irish physician Patrick Browne, both of whom had given the English name as "Old man". The specific epithet vetula is Latin meaning "old woman". The Jamaican lizard cuckoo is now one of 13 species placed in the genus Coccyzus that was introduced in 1816 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
The Jamaican lizard cuckoo and three other lizard cuckoos were for a time considered a single species. Individually they were previously placed in genus Saurothera that was later merged into the current Coccyzus, and they are considered a superspecies.
The Jamaican lizard cuckoo is 38 to 40 cm (15 to 16 in) long, about half of which is the tail, and weighs 86 to 105 g (3.0... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park | 🇯🇲 Jamaica |
More parks will be added in future updates.
Likely
About 40% of wildlife watchers report a Jamaican Lizard-Cuckoo sighting in Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park on a given day, based on 342 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 39th most-seen of the 91 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 70%, and over a week to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
April and July
In those months about 50% of wildlife watchers report a Jamaican Lizard-Cuckoo in Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park on a given day, against about 20% in October, the lowest month. June has too few records to rate.
Between 7 and 10 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Jamaican Lizard-Cuckoo sightings with a recorded time, and about 8 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park, in our data
Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Jamaican Lizard-Cuckoo sightings: about 40% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same family: Cuculidae
The closest relatives of the Jamaican Lizard-Cuckoo that you can see in Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park (family Cuculidae, Cuckoos) are Chestnut-bellied Cuckoo (about 40%) and Smooth-billed Ani (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Jamaican Lizard-Cuckoo is recorded against all the birds logged in Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park (342 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
