Black-bellied Cuckoo
| Black-bellied cuckoo | |
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| Black-bellied cuckoo at Alta Floresta, Mato Grosso State, Brazil | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Cuculiformes |
| Family: | Cuculidae |
| Genus: | Piaya |
| Species: | P. melanogaster |
| Binomial name | |
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Piaya melanogaster (Vieillot, 1817) |
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The black-bellied cuckoo or black-bellied squirrel cuckoo (Piaya melanogaster) is a bird of the family Cuculidae found in the Amazon region. The genus Playa is considered part of the cuckoos of the New World. Even though this species has a wide distribution, little is known about its ecology and natural history. This species is considered as monotypic. The word melanogaster means "black belly"; it has Greek roots, melas meaning "black" and gaster meaning "belly".
The average height of adults is between 38 and 40.5 cm. The beak is of an intense purple/red color, the iris is dark red with a blue orbital skin and one yellow mole at the anterior side of each eye. The head is grey and contrasts with the ruffle dorsal section of the bird. The throat and chest are brown-reddish, cinnamon color and the belly and crissum (the undertail coverts surrounding the cloaca) section are black. The tail is black with conspicuous wide white stripes. The juveniles do not differ from adults.P. melanogaster is better known because of the intense and some dark colors in the facial section and because of the grey crown.
P. melanogaster is often confused with the squirrel cuckoo (Piaya cayana) because both species share the same habitat. The squirrel cuckoo is more frequently observed in the canopy. They differ because P. cayana is seen more frequently in the canopy forest of firm land; also because the squirrel cuckoo has exposed yellow-greenish skin in the orbital area, the chest plumage is grey and it lacks the characteristic hood of the black-bellied cuckoo.
Their characteristic song is a compassed "dyerií-dyu, dyerií-dyu, dyerií-dyu…" sometimes repeated for one or a few minutes. This makes it difficult to trace their position. They typically remain motionless in the forest when singing. Also they produce faint grunts. There are 30 recordings in the foreground and 9 background recordings of the black-bellied cuckoo.
The genus Playa is considered paraphyletic. The little cuckoo (P. minuta) doesn't cluster with the squirrel cuckoo and the black-bellied cuckoo, as it was traditionally classified.
P. melanogaster is an infrequent species with an Amazonian distribution; it can be found in the upper parts of tropical rainforests and occasionally in savanna forests. Its preferred altitude is up to 800 meters above sea level. Is a native species of southern and eastern Guyana, Surinam, French Guyana, eastern Venezuela, Northern Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, eastern Perú and Brazil. Its distribution occupies 4 840 000 square kilometers approximately. It is not a migratory bird, it is a permanent resident of its range.
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Wikipedia