Chrysococcyx caprius
Silhouette: Nicolas Huet le Jeune and Jean-Gabriel Prêtre (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~30% in a week ~50%
The diederik cuckoo (Chrysococcyx caprius), formerly dideric cuckoo or didric cuckoo, is a member of the cuckoo family of birds, Cuculidae, which also includes the roadrunners and the anis. The diederik cuckoo was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in the Cape of Good Hope region of South Africa. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Cuculus caprius in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The diederik cuckoo is now placed in the genus Chrysococcyx that was erected by the German zoologist Friedrich Boie in 1826. The species is monotypic.
The generic name Chrysococcyx combines the Ancient Greek khrusos meaning "gold" and kokkux meaning "cuckoo". The specific epithet caprius is from the Latin cupreus meaning "coppery... Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mombasa | 🇰🇪 Kenya | |
| 2 | Ouagadougou | 🇧🇫 Burkina Faso | |
| 3 | Yaoundé | 🇨🇲 Cameroon | |
| 4 | Abidjan | 🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire | |
| 5 | Johannesburg | 🇿🇦 South Africa | |
| 6 | Brazzaville | 🇨🇬 Republic of the Congo | |
| 7 | Kampala | 🇺🇬 Uganda | |
| 8 | Pretoria | 🇿🇦 South Africa | |
| 9 | Lagos | 🇳🇬 Nigeria | |
| 10 | Abuja | 🇳🇬 Nigeria |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Dideric Cuckoo sighting in Kampala on a given day, based on 214 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 96th most-seen of the 332 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 30%, and over a week to about 50%, if each day is a fresh chance.
March and April
In those months about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Dideric Cuckoo in Kampala on a given day, against under 5% in August–September and November, the lowest months. Those are among Kampala's wettest months, with about 170 mm of rain a month against 55 mm in July.
Between 7 and 10 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Dideric 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.
7th of 20
Of the 20 cities where we can rate Dideric Cuckoo sightings, Kampala ranks 7th at about 10%. The best odds are in Mombasa (Kenya, about 30%), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso, about 30%) and Yaoundé (Cameroon, about 30%).
Same genus: Chrysococcyx
The closest relatives of the Dideric Cuckoo that you can see in Kampala (genus Chrysococcyx, Emerald Cuckoos and allies) are Klaas's Cuckoo (about 30%) and African Emerald Cuckoo (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Dideric Cuckoo is recorded against all the birds logged in Kampala (214 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.
