Cuckoos live on average up to 10 years and are 32 to 36 cm in size and their habitat is in thin forests and farmed landscapes with lots of structures.
Cuckoos never ever build their own nests or build nests at all and instead they use other birds nests.
Cuckoos practice nest parasitism as the cuckoo chicks wouldn't survive long on what the mother and father cuckoo eats and would die.
The other birds will feed the baby cuckoo birds their kinds of food which they can stomach and will survive on better.
Cuckoos are carnivores and insectivores and feed on various kinds of insects although they prefer to eat hairy caterpillars that most birds do not like.
Cuckoo birds also sometimes eat the eggs of small birds and chicks.
Cuckoos sing at night to attract mates and to bring out and attract other birds.
During the day the cuckoos are contending with the urban soundscape and their calls are not getting heard - so they've adapted to sing at night when they can be heard more clearly.
Cuckoos don't build nests as they are broad parasites and do not raise their own young but instead the cuckoo bird lays eggs in the nests of other birds, who then raise the baby cuckoo bird thinking it is one of their own.
Cuckoos are brood parasites which means that instead of the cuckoo birds building their own nest they take over and build their nest in other birds nests.
Cuckoos also have a terrible reputation of being home wreckers and taking over the nests of other birds and even killing their chicks.
One species however benefits it's hosts by producing a smelly fluid which repels predators.
Cuckoos are best known for being brood parasites which means that instead of the cuckoos building their own nest the female cuckoo lays their eggs in other birds nests like Reed Warblers, Dunnocks and Meadow Pipits.
Cuckoo birds are birds in the Cuculidae family, the sole taxon in the order Cuculiformes.
The cuckoo family of birds include the common or European cuckoo, roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals, and anis.
The coucals and anis are sometimes separated as distinct families, the Centropodidae and Crotophagidae, respectively.
Cuckoos are brood parasites, which means that they do not actually raise their own eggs.
Instead, the cuckoo bird will sneak onto another bird's nest and lay an egg in that nest.
Female cuckoo birds will target the nests of specific bird species.
In the UK, this is usually the reed warbler, the dunnock and the meadow pipit.
Hatched cuckoo chicks may push host eggs out of the nest or be raised alongside the host's chicks.
A female may visit up to 50 nests during a breeding season.
Cuckoo birds are named for the sounds they make.
Because of their shy personality, these birds are more often heard than seen.
More than 125 different types of cuckoos are found throughout the world. Examples include the common cuckoo, the yellow-billed cuckoo, and the birds called roadrunners, coucals, and anis.
The black-billed and yellow-billed cuckoos are the only two that migrate into North America while the other seven are permanent residents of either Central or South America.
Even though these two cuckoos overlap in range, they are not sister taxa.
This suggests that the two species invaded North America separately.