Profile
In flight
Tropical Birds
Guira Cuckoo
Guira guira
- uncommon
- 37 km/h
- Least Concern
Communal breeder: multiple females dump eggs in one nest, then half the chicks get evicted. Chaotic family, great courier.
- Population
- Unknown number of mature individuals; described as common with the global population suspected to be increasing (BirdLife DataZone 2024 assessment), as habitat degradation continues to create new areas of suitable open habitat.
- Habitat
- Open and semi-open, non-forest habitats: degraded former forest, seasonally wet and dry grasslands, savannas, shrublands, wetland/marsh edges, pastures, coastal dunes, and suburban parks/gardens; occurs from sea level up to roughly 1,200-1,250 m elevation.
- Fun fact
- Guira Cuckoos breed communally, with several females laying into one shared nest of up to 20 eggs, but competing adults destroy, bury, or kill many of the eggs and chicks so that typically only about a quarter survive to fledge.
- Range
- Widespread across east-central South America: northeastern, eastern and southern Brazil, eastern Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and northern/eastern Argentina (extent of occurrence ~10,600,000 km²), a range reported to have expanded following deforestation; the species is generally described in the specialist literature (Wikipedia, Cornell Birds of the World, oiseaux-birds.com) as sedentary/resident with no documented long-distance migration, though BirdLife DataZone's own factsheet field tags species-level migratory status as "Full Migrant" (see disputes). Vagrant/uncertain-origin occurrences, likely escaped cage birds, are also recorded in the Dutch Caribbean (Bonaire, Curaçao, Sint Maarten).
- Diet
- Opportunistic predator/omnivore: insects (grasshoppers, cicadas, termites), other arthropods, tadpoles and frogs, lizards, small mammals such as mice, and eggs/nestlings of small birds.
- Size
- 0.34 m
