Exploring Pigeon Valley: The Emerald Cuckoo

This is the 97th article in an ongoing series that highlights the riches of Pigeon Valley, the urban nature reserve in the heart of Glenwood. The focus of this article is on the Emerald Cuckoo.

The New Year starts with a visual treat, with what I think is the most beautiful of the cuckoos that visit at this time, with iridescent deep green feathers above and soft yellow underside. This bird was not photographed in Pigeon Valley, where catching a sight of this bird in the canopy during one of its rare visits is difficult – I was lucky to spot this, one of a pair, at a private reserve near Hluhluwe.

However, I heard an Emerald calling a couple of weeks back, a very distinctive call with a high final note. South Africa is blessed with a wide range of cuckoos, most of them birds that visit here to breed in the summer months, among them the Emerald. Pigeon Valley has its own resident cuckoo species, the Klaas’s Cuckoo, but at this time of the year the Diderik Cuckoo, often known as the Christmas Bird, is a typical visitor.

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Possibilities include, in order of likelihood, the Black Cuckoo – I watched a pair hawking alates a couple of years back, and later saw a young bird, perhaps the legacy of their visit; the Redchested Cuckoo (“Piet-my-vrou”), which is an occasional but generally silent visitor; the Jacobin Cuckoo, which visited about three years ago; and even the Common Cuckoo, the European species that migrates to Africa, though not to breed. The last known sighting of one of these in the reserve was in 2018.

Of course, the Emerald Cuckoo, like these others, does not care for its young but delegates that responsibility to others. One of its host birds is the Green-backed Camaroptera, the miniscule but loud inhabitant of the undergrowth. To watch a bird of this size feed a towering cuckoo chick is a remarkable sight!

Crispin Hemson chairs the Friends of Pigeon Valley, a group that undertakes clearing of alien plants, keeps records of bird and mammal sightings and alerts management to any problems.

The Friends have a monthly walk at 7.30am on the second Saturday of each month. Email: friendsofpigeonvalley1@gmail.com.

Caxton Local Media Covid-19 reporting