If you drive on country roads in the summer in the United States, you may notice giant webs in some of the broad leaf trees and shrubs. Tent caterpillars create those tents to protect their larvae that feed on and often defoliate and stunt the growth of those trees and shrubs.
Thankfully there’s a bird that is able to eat hairy caterpillars (one of only a few!), and I was excited last month when my friend and I spotted one in a shrub at a wildlife refuge.
I have only seen a Yellow-billed Cuckoo one other time—sitting in the top of an oak tree in our backyard during migration season. I remember frantically scouring through the pages of a bird guide with one hand while trying to train my binoculars on it with my other hand before it disappeared.
I had been birding for decades by then, but I had never seen a creature like that before. It’s a large bird (10-11 inches long) with brownish-gray feathers on top and a white breast and belly. It has long black tail feathers that sport giant white polka dots on the undersides.
Until that day, I didn’t even know cuckoos could be found in our state. Turns out we also get Black-billed Cuckoos in Wisconsin.
Yellow-billed Cuckoos are very shy and they are patient hunters so they can be difficult to spot since they don’t move around a lot. The bird we saw was sitting in a sunny shrub, and I only caught sight of him because I was trying to identify a fast-moving bird that had flown into that same shrub.
These birds are found in the Eastern United States as well as the Great Plains. They really travel a long distance to their wintering grounds. They migrate as far as away as the southern part of South America!
According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, one Yellow-billed Cuckoo can eat “thousands of caterpillars per season” and may eat “as many as 100 caterpillars at a sitting.”
Someday I hope to hear their interesting calls and songs in person. Now that I’ve seen one at one of my favorite birding spots and I know where to look, I’m hoping I’ll be able to find this species much more often!