Saurothera merlini
Silhouette: Nicolas Huet le Jeune and Jean-Gabriel Prêtre (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~10% in a week ~30%
The great lizard cuckoo (Coccyzus merlini) is a species of bird in the tribe Phaenicophaeini, subfamily Cuculinae of the cuckoo family Cuculidae. It is found in the Bahamas and Cuba. The great 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 North American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society, the International Ornithological Committee, and the Clements taxonomy assign it these four subspecies:
During part of the 19th century C. m. bahamensis was treated as a separate species, the Bahama lizard cuckoo, and the other three subspecies were collectively known as the Cuban lizard cuckoo. BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World has reverted to that two-species treatment.
The great lizard cuckoo is the largest species in genus Coccyzus. It is 42 to 54 cm (17 to 21 in... Wikipedia →
Recording0:16
Cuba · 2018
© mjfeldman · iNaturalist · CC BY-NC 4.0
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ciénaga de Zapata | 🇨🇺 Cuba |
More parks will be added in future updates.
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Havana | 🇨🇺 Cuba |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Great Lizard-Cuckoo sighting in Havana on a given day, based on 77 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 92nd most-seen of the 183 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.
January–March, May and August
In those months about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Great Lizard-Cuckoo in Havana on a given day, against under 5% in April, June–July and September–December, the lowest months.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Great Lizard-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.
Only Havana, in our data
Havana is the only city on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Great Lizard-Cuckoo sightings: under 5% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same family: Cuculidae
The closest relatives of the Great Lizard-Cuckoo that you can see in Havana (family Cuculidae, Cuckoos) are Smooth-billed Ani (about 30%) and Yellow-billed Cuckoo (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Great Lizard-Cuckoo is recorded against all the birds logged in Havana (77 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.
