Pallid cuckoo calls

["Jack and Andrea Holland" <>]

To make matters more complicated, in my experience all the 5 local cuckoos can make calls different from the best known, particularly when they are responding to each other.  A recent example is the two Horsfield's Bronze-cuckoos currently in my local patch of NW Cooleman Ridge/Narrabundah Hill.  A few weeks ago they were making very house sparrow-like calls when on exposed perches a 100 m or so apart.  Last weekend while on a fence within cms of each other the calling was a very pipit like "chirrup", one that I've heard a number of times before (and is mentioned in Pizzey and Knight).  In both cases I was originally alerted by the "traditional" call.

 

So the moral of the story is if you see and hear what you think may be a pipit on a fence, have a closer look.  The very hunched posture of cuckoos (they sit right on the wires with no/little leg showing) is another clue.

 

Jack Holland