Clamator jacobinus
Silhouette: Nicolas Huet le Jeune and Jean-Gabriel Prêtre (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~20% in a week ~50%
The Jacobin cuckoo (Clamator jacobinus), also pied cuckoo or pied crested cuckoo, is a member of the cuckoo order of birds that is found in Africa and Asia. It is partially migratory and in India, it has been considered a harbinger of the monsoon rains due to the timing of its arrival. It has been associated with a bird in Indian mythology and poetry, known as the chātaka (Sanskrit: चातक) represented as a bird with a beak on its head that waits for rains to quench its thirst.
The Jacobin cuckoo was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux in 1780. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle. This 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 jacobinus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The type locality is the Coromandel Coast of southeast India.
The current genus Clamator was erected by German naturalist... Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tiruchirappalli | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 2 | Coimbatore | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 3 | Tiruppur | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 4 | Berhampore | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 5 | Madurai | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 6 | Rajkot | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 7 | Vijayawada | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 8 | Jaipur | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 9 | Vasai-Virar | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 10 | Chennai | 🇮🇳 India |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Jacobin Cuckoo sighting in Madurai on a given day, based on 81 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 52nd most-seen of the 118 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 20%, and over a week to about 50%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January and March
In those months about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Jacobin Cuckoo in Madurai on a given day, against under 5% in May, August and November, the lowest months. Those are among Madurai's driest months, with about 15 mm of rain a month against 200 mm in October.
Between 6 and 9 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Jacobin 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.
5th of 51
Of the 51 cities where we can rate Jacobin Cuckoo sightings, Madurai ranks 5th at about 10%. The best odds are in Tiruchirappalli (India, about 20%), Coimbatore (India, about 20%) and Tiruppur (India, about 10%).
Same family: Cuculidae
The closest relatives of the Jacobin Cuckoo that you can see in Madurai (family Cuculidae, Cuckoos) are Asian Koel (about 80%), Greater Coucal (about 60%) and Common Hawk-Cuckoo (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Jacobin Cuckoo is recorded against all the birds logged in Madurai (81 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.
