Coccyzus americanus
Silhouette: Andy Wilson · PhyloPic
In 3 days <5%
The yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus) is a member of the cuckoo family. Common folk names for this bird in the southern United States are rain crow and storm crow. These likely refer to the bird's habit of calling on hot days, often presaging rain showers or thunderstorms. The genus name is from the Ancient Greek kokkuzo, which means to call like a common cuckoo, and americanus means "of America".
The yellow-billed cuckoo was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the other cuckoos in the genus Cuculus and coined the binomial name Cuculus americanus. Linnaeus based his description on the "Cuckow of Carolina" that had been described and illustrated in 1729–1732 by the English naturalist Mark Catesby in his The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. The yellow-billed cuckoo is now placed with 12 other species in the genus Coccyzus that was introduced in 1816 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot. The genus name is from the Ancient Greek kokkuzō meaning "to cry cuckoo". The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Austin | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 2 | San Antonio | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 3 | Bogota | 🇨🇴 Colombia | |
| 4 | Havana | 🇨🇺 Cuba | |
| 5 | Dallas | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 6 | Houston | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 7 | Orlando | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 8 | Washington | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 9 | Monterrey | 🇲🇽 México | |
| 10 | Miami | 🇺🇸 United States |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Yellow-billed Cuckoo sighting in Boston on a given day, based on 85 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 224th most-seen of the 283 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to under 5%, if each day is a fresh chance.
Any time of year
In every month with enough records, under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Yellow-billed Cuckoo in Boston on a given day, so our monthly data shows no clear season.
Between 9 am and noon
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Yellow-billed Cuckoo sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
22nd of 28
Of the 28 cities where we can rate Yellow-billed Cuckoo sightings, Boston ranks 22nd at under 5%. The best odds are in Austin (United States, about 10%), San Antonio (United States, about 10%) and Bogota (Colombia, about 10%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Yellow-billed Cuckoo is recorded against all the birds logged in Boston (85 verified sightings), 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.
