Thick-billed Cuckoo Pachycoccyx audeberti Scientific name definitions

The Thick-billed Cuckoo has a somewhat hawk-like (Accipiter) demeanor, which is fitting given that it is rapacious brood-parasite, apparently dependent almost exclusively on Prionops helmetshrikes to raise the species’ young. Unlike many parasitic cuckoos, it does not rely on stealth to successfully lay its egg in the host’s nest, rather upon brute force; the female cuckoo will knock the attendant helmetshrike from the nest, seize one of the occupant’s clutch, simultaneously lay an egg of its own, and then depart as swiftly as it arrived. Very widespread across mainland Africa, from Sierra Leone in the west, to Kenya and Tanzania in the east, and south to northeastern South Africa, the species also occurs in eastern Madagascar, where Thick-billed Cuckoo was long known from just three specimens collected between 1878 and 1922 (one of them the type!), until its rediscovery in 1992. There are still very few records in Madagascar, where most aspects of the species’ biology are still unknown (including its hosts, given that there are no helmetshrikes there). Indeed, away from Zimbabwe, there have been very few detailed observations of this cuckoo, although it has recently been proven to be much more numerous than was long believed in parts of West Africa (especially Togo and Ghana), and the first records have been confirmed in Mali and Uganda. Furthermore, the routine use of molecular techniques to solve systematic conundrums has also enabled a much better understanding of the Thick-billed Cuckoo’s correct placement, and closest relatives, within the family.