I have been keeping a close watch on the birds visiting my garden for a couple of years now and I have compiled a list of 35 – 40 species (the exact number depends on whether I count birds seen from my garden but not really in it) but I am still seeing new ones.
I saw this speckled bird perched on our power-line and foraging in our bottlebrush nearly a week ago. Once I found out that it was a juvenile Brush Cuckoo, Cacomantis variolosus, I started looking for the parents but (so far) with no luck. The adults look quite different – here is a photo on Birdway – and I don’t think I would mistake them for any of our other regular visitors. Juveniles of many species, of course, are camouflage coloured and it does make identification more difficult.
Both these photos were taken on the same occasion. I don’t know whether it was our guest’s first visit but it was the first I noticed; I saw what I assume to be the same bird again yesterday so perhaps it has moved in to the area.
Good morning! My neighbour sent me a bird photo and asked for an ID. I had no idea, but thanks to your blog I think we’ve figured out it’s a brush cuckoo fledgling!
My neighbour said it was an owl. I knew it was most definitely not an owl but thought it had pheasant coucal markings.
The juveniles look darker than this little fellow, so I followed the ‘cuckoo’ rabbit hole in case I was on the right track – and your blog post came up about the brush cuckoo. So I decided to do a more general image search to see what images of juvenile brush cuckoos came up.
Also, I noticed a pair of very attentive peewees on the powerlines above it and thought it might be a case of a cuckoo egg being laid in a peewee nest and raised by them.
We later saw the peewees fly down to little hungry bird and that convinced me that it was a cuckoo. Silly thing kept flying into the middle of the road so we stayed awhile to ensure it was safe.
Thanks, Diana – lovely story.