NPS/Intern Tristan Thomas Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus)• Yellow-billed Cuckoos are one of the only bird species that can eat hairy caterpillars. And in the East they eat about 100 tent caterpillars in one sitting.• They don’t lay their eggs all at once. Instead they do “asynchronous” egg laying which means that the oldest chick can be close to leaving the nest when the youngest is just hatching. • Yellow-billed Cuckoos are patient feeders and they sit motionless on hidden perches and are often hunched over to disguise their white bellies as they wait for prey to move. Identification Information:• Size: Between a Robin and a Crow (Medium)• Color: Brown on their tops with a clean white underneath and on their bellies. They have a yellow beak. They have a blackish mask across the face and a yellow eyering. They have a long tail that has white circles on it.
All of the above information is an abbreviated version of information gathered from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Please visit their website for more in-depth bird information.
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Last updated: August 27, 2019