Clamator jacobinus
Silhouette: Nicolas Huet le Jeune and Jean-Gabriel Prêtre (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~40% in a week ~60%
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 uMkhuze Game Reserve on a given day, based on 70 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 149th most-seen of the 283 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 40%, and over a week to about 60%, if each day is a fresh chance.
November
In that month about 40% of wildlife watchers report a Jacobin Cuckoo in uMkhuze Game Reserve on a given day, against under 5% in July to September, the lowest months.
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.
8th of 55
Of the 55 parks where we can rate Jacobin Cuckoo sightings, uMkhuze Game Reserve ranks 8th at about 10%. The best odds are in Udawalawe National Park (Sri Lanka, about 30%), Tsavo West National Park (Kenya, about 20%) and Meru National Park (Kenya, about 20%).
Same family: Cuculidae
The closest relatives of the Jacobin Cuckoo that you can see in uMkhuze Game Reserve (family Cuculidae, Cuckoos) are White-browed Coucal (about 60%), Red-chested Cuckoo (about 40%) and Dideric Cuckoo (about 30%), 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 uMkhuze Game Reserve (70 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.
