Shining Cuckoo

A little while ago I had a very exciting visitor, a Shining Cuckoo/Pīpiwharauroa! I first saw it fly into my kōwhai tree, where it stayed and picked off caterpillars one by one. The Cuckoo visited for a few consecutive days and I tried to sneakily snap some photos, although it was quite hard as it was always quite hidden amongst the kōwhai leaves. Up until the start of the year I’d only seen a Shining Cuckoo on 3 occasions, and since then I have seen countless, including this one, a few at Zealandia Ecosanctuary and several at Bushy Park Sanctuary.

These birds are quite an oddity, as they migrate here from overseas every spring, find a Grey Warbler nest, remove one egg, and lay one egg in the nest. From there the Cuckoo has no part in raising the chick, the egg hatches before the Grey Warbler eggs, and it kicks the other eggs out of the nest, the poor Grey Warbler parent is left to raise a chick much bigger than itself. It is quite a sight to see them being fed. These first three photos are from my tree, and the following are from Zealandia, I’ve included them to show the size difference between the giant Cuckoo chick and it’s tiny Grey Warbler ‘parent’.