Chrysococcyx klaas
Silhouette: Nicolas Huet le Jeune and Jean-Gabriel Prêtre (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~60% in a week ~90%
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 |
Possible
About 30% of wildlife watchers report a Klaas's Cuckoo sighting in Kampala on a given day, based on 572 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 48th most-seen of the 332 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 60%, and over a week to about 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
April and May
In those months about 40% of wildlife watchers report a Klaas's Cuckoo in Kampala on a given day, against about 10% in August, the lowest month. Those are among Kampala's wettest months, with about 180 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 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.
Yes
Of the 16 cities where we can rate Klaas's Cuckoo sightings, Kampala has the highest daily chance: about 30%. Next come Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso, about 20%) and Brazzaville (Republic of the Congo, about 20%).
Same genus: Chrysococcyx
The closest relatives of the Klaas's Cuckoo that you can see in Kampala (genus Chrysococcyx, Emerald Cuckoos and allies) are African Emerald Cuckoo (about 10%) and Dideric Cuckoo (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Klaas's Cuckoo is recorded against all the birds logged in Kampala (572 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.
