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.