Distribution, habitats and conservation status

• Main Author: Payne, Robert B
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressOxford 2005
• Subjects: Iceland; Alaska
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198502135.003.0002; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52322009/isbn-9780198502135-book-part-2.pdf

Abstract Cuckoos occur around the world in tropical and temperate regions. More species live in the Old World (n = 109) than in the New World (n = 32). The northernmost cuckoos (Common Cuckoo Cuculus canorus, Oriental Cuckoo C. optatus, Indian Cuckoo C. micropterus, Asian Lesser Cuckoo C. polio cephalus) occur in northern Europe and Russia in summer.They are migrant brood-parasites that lay in the nests of migrant Palearctic songbirds and then winter in the tropics, sometimes crossing the equator and even passing over the Indian Ocean from Asia to Africa. In the New World the two species (Yellow billed Cuckoo, Black-billed Cuckoo Coccyzus ery thropthalmus) that breed in the United States and Canada are mainly warm-weather birds that spend most of the year in the New World tropics. No cuckoo species occurs regularly and breeds in both the Old World and the New World, although vagrants from northeastern Asia (Common Cuckoo and Oriental Cuckoo) turn up in the Alaskan archi pelago and northern Alaska in migration season, and vagrant Black-billed Cuckoos and Yellow-billed Cuckoos from northeastern North America show up in many years in Europe from Iceland to Italy.