Cuculus lepidus
Silhouette: Nicolas Huet le Jeune and Jean-Gabriel Prêtre (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~20% in a week ~40%
The Sunda cuckoo or Sunda lesser cuckoo (Cuculus lepidus) is a South-east Asian bird belonging to the genus Cuculus in the cuckoo family, Cuculidae. It was formerly classified with the Himalayan cuckoo (C. saturatus) and Oriental cuckoo (C. optatus) in a single species, C. saturatus, but is now often regarded as a separate species based on differences in voice, size and plumage.
It is 29–30 cm long. The upperparts, throat and upper breast are dark grey. The rest of the underparts are buff with black bars. The tail is blackish with white spots. The female also occurs in a rufous form which has reddish-brown upperparts, paler underparts and black barring both above and below. The Himalayan cuckoo and Oriental cuckoo are similar to the Sunda cuckoo but paler with less buff-coloured underparts and narrower black bars.
The song of the Sunda cuckoo usually consists of a short first note followed by two or three longer and lower "hoop" notes. The whole song is higher-pitched than that of the Himalayan cuckoo which gives three or four "hoop" notes.
It was first described as a species in 1845 by the German naturalist Salomon Müller. In 1940 it was included in... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kinabalu Park | 🇲🇾 Malaysia | |
| 2 | Kerinci Seblat National Park | 🇮🇩 Indonesia |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Sunda Cuckoo sighting in Kerinci Seblat National Park on a given day, based on 40 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 94th most-seen of the 203 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 20%, and over a week to about 40%, if each day is a fresh chance.
February and March
In those months about 30% of wildlife watchers report a Sunda Cuckoo in Kerinci Seblat National Park on a given day, against under 5% in July–October and December, the lowest months. January has too few records to rate.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Sunda Cuckoo sightings with a recorded time, and about 7 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
2nd of 2
Of the 2 parks where we can rate Sunda Cuckoo sightings, Kerinci Seblat National Park ranks 2nd at about 10%. The best odds are in Kinabalu Park (Malaysia, about 20%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Sunda Cuckoo is recorded against all the birds logged in Kerinci Seblat National Park (40 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), 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.
