Banded Bay Cuckoo and Plaintive Cuckoo

The Little Bronze Cuckoo (Click HERE to view the Little Bronze Cuckoo) that I spotted in Ipoh reminds me of the juvenile Banded Bay Cuckoo and Plaintive Cuckoos I encountered in year 2009. I therefore would like to share their pictures again in this blog.

The first encounter was the Juvenile Banded Bay Cuckoo (Cacomantis sonnerati) and a Common Iora (Aegithina tiphia) in Ipoh, which I spotted on 11-July-2009 together with Connie and Peggy.

Cuckoos are nest parasites, laying their eggs in the nest of the host. The photographs have obviously shown that the iora is the foster parent of the much larger juvenile, it has been tricked into incubating and brooding the cuckoo chick. 

Here are the pictures show the Juvenile Banded Bay Cuckoo being fed by a Common Iora:

To understand more about the behaviour of the brood parasitic, watch this video clip from Youtube, "Nature of the Cuckoo" by David Attenborough, BBC:

To learn more about cuckoo, you can read the introduction chapter from the book "Cuckoo" by Robert B. Payne, CLICK HERE.

The second encounter was the juvenile Banded Bay Cuckoo in the month of July 2009, it was spotted in my neighbourhood in the southern part of Penang islands. Here is the picture of the second Banded Bay Cuckoo which I spotted in Penang:

The third encounter was the Plaintive Cuckoo (Cacomantis merulinus) in Kek Lok Toong, Ipoh on 24 October 2009. The Plaintive Cuckoo is a beautiful bird, which is hardly seen in Penang but one can hear its calls in the evenings. I was very fortunate to see both male and female Plaintive Cuckoo. 

The female:

The male:

and they love caterpillars very much:

Happy Birding and Digiscoping.