The chestnut-winged cuckoo or red-winged crested cuckoo (Clamator coromandus ) is a cuckoo found in Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia. It has dark glossy upperparts, a black head with long crest chestnut wings, a long graduated glossy black tail, rufous throat dusky underside and a narrow white nuchal half collar. They breed along the Himalayas and migrate south in winter to Sri Lanka, southern India and tropical Southeast Asia including parts of Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. It is about 47 cm long.
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TerrestrialTerrestrial animals are animals that live predominantly or entirely on land (e.g., cats, ants, snails), as compared with aquatic animals, which liv...
Oviparous animals are female animals that lay their eggs, with little or no other embryonic development within the mother. This is the reproductive...
Altricial animals are those species whose newly hatched or born young are relatively immobile. They lack hair or down, are not able to obtain food ...
Flocking birds are those that tend to gather to forage or travel collectively. Avian flocks are typically associated with migration. Flocking also ...
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MigratingAnimal migration is the relatively long-distance movement of individual animals, usually on a seasonal basis. It is the most common form of migrati...
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starts withThis dark and crested cuckoo has chestnut wings, a glossy black crest and a graduated tail (the feathers shortening in steps from the center outwards) whose terminal edges are white and inconspicuous unlike the white tips of the Jacobin cuckoo which is found in parts of its range. The black capping on the head is broken from black of the back by a white collar that extends to the sides of the neck. The lower parts are rufous turning to dark grey towards the vent. Young birds are dusky with a scaly appearance to the wing feathers.
The species is found from the western Himalayas to the eastern Himalayas and extends into Southeast Asia. It has been recorded from India, Nepal, China, Indonesia, Laos, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Some populations may be non-migratory.
During migration in India, it moves along the Eastern Ghats in its southward migration with exhausted individuals often being discovered in the vicinity of homes. In mid-October, they are found in numbers at Point Calimere, possibly into Sri Lanka. Some appear to winter in the Western Ghats.
This cuckoo sometimes joins mixed species foraging flocks and is usually seen singly. The breeding season is in summer and it is said to lay its eggs mainly in the nest of Garrulax laughingthrushes, especially G. monileger and G. pectoralis. The eggs are very spherical. The calls include fluty twin-notes repeated with short intervals.
