Overview
Common Cicadabird: Medium, slender, slate-gray bird, black edging in wings, and black tail tip. White spots on undertail. Fairly long wings. Female gray above, black lores, white eyebrow and crescent below eye, white edging in wings, and white-buff below with fine bars on breast and flanks. Juvenile like female but more brown, some streaks below.
Range and Habitat
Cuckoo-shrikes (Campephagidae)
ORDER
Most small birds such as sparrows, fantails, thrushes, and cuckoo-shrikes are members of the one hundred and eighteen families in the largest taxonomic order of
birds; the PASSERIFORMES (pronounced pas-ser-i-FOR-meez).
FAMILY TAXONOMY
The cuckoo-shrikes are placed in the campephagidae (pronounced camp-i-FADJ-i-dee), a group of eighty-five species in eight genera found in sub-Saharan Africa, southern and eastern Asia, and Australasia.
SOUTH PACIFIC-PALAU
Eleven species of cuckoo-shrikes in two genera are found in the South Pacific. One species, the Palau Cicadabird, also occurs in Palau.
KNOWN FOR
Members of this family are known for their resemblance to Cuculus cuckoo species, and eating large numbers of hairy caterpillars.
PHYSICAL
Members of the campephagidae are small to medium birds with short to medium, stout beaks, long wings, medium to long tails, and short to medium legs.
COLORATION
Gray and white with some black markings is the common plumage pattern for most species of Coracina cuckooshrikes. Some species of cuckoo-shrikes in New Guinea and Africa also have mostly yellow plumage, the trillers are black and white, and many of the minivets have brilliant orange, red, and black plumage.
GEOGRAPHIC HABITAT
Most members of the campephagidae family live in forested habitats except for the Ground Cuckoo-shrike, a bird of open grasslands in Australia.
MIGRATION
Members of this family are sedentary except for the Ashy Minivet, a species that migrates from eastern Asia to southern Asia for the winter.
HABITS
Cuckoo-shrikes are usually seen in pairs or a few individuals that forage in mixed flocks with other bird species. Some minivet species also flock together. Members of this family use their bills to glean insects from foliage and catch prey in the air after sallying out from a perch.
CONSERVATION
Most cuckoo-shrike species have stable populations but twelve species are rated as Vulnerable or Near Threatened because of habitat loss in limited distributions encompassed by islands, or small mountain ranges. The rarest species is the Reunion Cuckoo-shrike, a Critically Endangered bird species restricted to two small forest patches on the island of Reunion.
INTERESTING FACTS
Despite their name, the cuckoo-shrikes are neither related to cuckoos nor shrikes. Hairy caterpillars make up a large part of the diet of many cuckoo-shrike species. Cuckoo-shrikes are referred to as “shufflewings” in some places because they tend to “shuffle” or move their wings after landing on a branch. Some ornithologists classify the cuckoo-shrike species in Palau as a subspecies of the Common Cicadabird, whereas others consider it to be a separate, endemic species known as the Palau Cicadabird.