Chrysococcyx klaas
Silhouette: Nicolas Huet le Jeune and Jean-Gabriel Prêtre (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~10% in a week ~30%
Klaas's cuckoo (Chrysococcyx klaas) is a species of cuckoo in the family Cuculidae which is native to the wooded regions of sub-Saharan Africa. The specific name honours Klaas, the Khoikhoi man who collected the type specimen.
The species was named Le Coucou de Klaas by French explorer François Le Vaillant in 1806, in his book Histoire naturelle des oiseaux d'Afrique in recognition of his Khoikhoi servant and assistant, named Klaas, who found the type specimen. Le Vaillant wrote:...mon ami Klaas... Recois l'hommage que je t'adresse ici... Puissent les naturalistes conserver à l'espèce que je vais décrire, le nom que je lui donne, et consacre ainsi les services que tu m'as rendus: ils me prouveront par là que mes travaux ont eu quelque prix à leurs yeux.
Le Vaillant's wish was honoured when the bird's first binomial name, Cuculus klaas, was applied by James Francis Stephens in 1815, and the tribute to Klaas has persisted to the present binomial. The bird is the first known case of a species being named after an Indigenous individual, and Le Vaillant is one of the only colonial biologists to name bird species after local people. Edgar Leopold Layard named the brown-breasted... Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kampala | 🇺🇬 Uganda | |
| 2 | Ouagadougou | 🇧🇫 Burkina Faso | |
| 3 | Brazzaville | 🇨🇬 Republic of the Congo | |
| 4 | Mombasa | 🇰🇪 Kenya | |
| 5 | Nairobi | 🇰🇪 Kenya | |
| 6 | Yaoundé | 🇨🇲 Cameroon | |
| 7 | Dar es-Salaam | 🇹🇿 Tanzania | |
| 8 | Abuja | 🇳🇬 Nigeria | |
| 9 | Freetown | 🇸🇱 Sierra Leone | |
| 10 | Kigali | 🇷🇼 Rwanda |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Klaas's Cuckoo sighting in Durban on a given day, based on 46 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 109th most-seen of the 219 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 10%, and over a week to about 30%, if each day is a fresh chance.
December
In that month about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Klaas's Cuckoo in Durban on a given day, against under 5% in February–August and October–November, the lowest months. That is one of Durban's wettest months, with about 210 mm of rain against 25 mm in June.
Between 7 and 10 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Klaas's 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.
12th of 16
Of the 16 cities where we can rate Klaas's Cuckoo sightings, Durban ranks 12th at under 5%. The best odds are in Kampala (Uganda, about 30%), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso, about 20%) and Brazzaville (Republic of the Congo, about 20%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Klaas's Cuckoo is recorded against all the birds logged in Durban (46 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.
