going cuckoo over this cuckoo! Can you help?

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Wollemi
Wollemi's picture
going cuckoo over this cuckoo! Can you help?

I think this is a fan-tailed cuckoo, what do others think?

Martyn

I think it is too, although usually I would expect a more distinctive yellow around the eye, maybe that was lost given the lighting of the photo

zosterops
zosterops's picture

juveniles don't have the yellow eye-ring. 

Martyn

I think the fan-tailed juveniles do. Simpson and Day notes it as a way of helping distinguish juvenile fan tailed from juvenile brush cuckoos, and its present for most photos I looked at of juvenile fan taileds.

zosterops
zosterops's picture

hmm it seems some don't

juv fan tailed

http://dl.id.au/photo_birds/2012-01-09_7699.jpg

Martyn

It also seems to occur again on another fan tailed juvenile

http://dl.id.au/photo_birds/2012-01-09_7656.jpg

Also funnily enough here's a juv. brush cuckoo that's developed a yellow eye ring

http://m2.i.pbase.com/o9/86/959086/1/152852142.6s4EdJ0I.onbekendbp.jpg

Guess I better cross that line out in my field book, although the 2 seem easy enough to distinguish on plumage alone

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