Endangered
Bay-breasted Cuckoo
Coccyzus rufigularis
Bay-breasted Cuckoo is endemic to the Dominican Republic on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
Appearance
The species' bill is stout and decurved, with a black maxilla and a yellow mandible. Males and females have the same plumage. Adults have gray upperparts with chestnut on the wing's primaries, a gray face, a dark chestnut chin and breast, a pale rufous belly, and gray undertail coverts.
The bay-breasted cuckoo is 46 to 51 cm (18 to 20 in) long, about half of that is the tail. One male specimen weighed 128 g (4.5 oz).
Range and habitat
The bay-breasted cuckoo historically ranged widely in both the Dominican Republic and Haiti. As of 2020, it had possibly been extirpated from mainland Haiti and definitely from Gonâve Island, and was known to nest in only two areas of the Dominican Republic. Local reports, sight records, and photographs from other sites since 2005 hint that the species is present outside those two areas, and "it is likely that small breeding populations remain at these sites." The bay-breasted cuckoo inhabits lowlands and foothills up to at least 900 m (3,000 ft).
It is endemic to the Dominican Republic on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. It is possibly extirpated in Haiti.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The bay-breasted cuckoo has a varied diet that includes adult insects, caterpillars, grubs, lizards, and mice. It forages mostly from the forest mid-story to the canopy, leaping between branches.
The bay-breasted cuckoo's breeding phenology is almost unknown. Its breeding season is from February to the beginning of the wet season in June. It builds a loose platform nest of twigs in a tree.
In crisis
Bay-breasted Cuckoo is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Bay-breasted Cuckoo, Wikidata item Q865409. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
