Birds of Sunset Park: Absolutely Cuckoo

It’s a strange thing to decide to write about cuckoos, and I’ll explain why in a moment. But the reason I’m doing it this month specifically is that in October of last year, I saw and photographed a Yellow-billed Cuckoo at Bush Terminal Park, so I’ve got a nice picture and some opinions to share!

The reason it’s peculiar to make cuckoos the focus of a column is that for most people, these birds simply do not exist. In plainer terms, cuckoos are incredibly hard to see — not because they are a declining or threatened species, but rather because they typically choose not to be seen. The Yellow-billed Cuckoo and its less common cousin, the Black-billed Cuckoo — the two Northeastern cuckoo species — both nest in small numbers in the city, but favor breeding grounds just an hour or so north of here, in the Hudson Valley.

These two cuckoos are commonly referred to as “rain crows,” as they supposedly call when some precipitation is imminent. The only times I personally have heard cuckoos calling, however, is when I was birding outside the city, and one of the challenges of seeing either of these species within the five boroughs is that, rain or shine, they tend to be completely silent. (Side note: the cuckoo call you know from cuckoo clocks is that of the Common Cuckoo, a Eurasian species, and our cuckoos sound quite different.) Yellow-billed and Black-billed Cuckoos are not active birds and tend to perch deep in the canopy, partially or completely obscured. There also seems to be some kind of mystical force field that prevents us mortals from seeing them, and these birds have an uncanny ability to fully and instantaneously disappear behind it. One moment, they are there, and then suddenly no more. (One of my birding friends calls cuckoos “ghostly.”)

Birders usually spot a cuckoo when they are looking at some high-up songbird and, by good fortune, their eyes catch a glimpse of the cuckoo almost imperceptibly perched next to it. In New York City, you simply cannot set out to see a cuckoo; you only see them when a cuckoo deems you worthy of the honor. In practical terms, that worthiness is earned by putting in many hours of birding.

As a neighborhood patch birder, I have seen both cuckoo species in Sunset Park over the past few years, and Yellow-billed at Bush Terminal Park. And the way I “found” those birds was basically dumb luck, or rather a combination of showing up, being persistent and learning which parts of the park had the most potential for birds in general. To dig into the numbers, after birding at Bush Terminal Park and Sunset Park a collective 900 times or so, I’ve seen Yellow-billed Cuckoos four times and Black-billed twice — hence the importance of being patient! Seeing a cuckoo is always a joy. Awkward, alien-seeming birds with the furtive vibe of Cold War-era spies, they are never totally unexpected, but whenever I see them, I feel lucky, like I’ve been chosen.

I’d love to end this column with a paragraph where I pass on invaluable wisdom on how to see a cuckoo, but in a way, my fundamental advice is the same as it would be for any bird: go out into nature, be receptive to whatever is there, and appreciate every bird you see as a blessing. The longer you spend looking for birds, the more birds you will see, and the more attuned you will become to the environment you’re in and the creatures in it. And, well, the longer you spend doing this hobby, the more likely it is that you will see some cuckoos. It’s a numbers game, and if the birding gods smile on you, a cuckoo will grace you with its presence.