| The first time I saw a Striped Cuckoo was at Waller Field in Trinidad, in the company of Steve and Necia Koury and a gentleman named Ramdas, a guide from the Asa Wright Nature Centre. We watched a perched Striped Cuckoo being harassed by a female Black-throated Mango; the mango was hovering above the cuckoo, and plunging down repeatedly towards its head in a piledriving motion, increasing the speed of its attacks until the cuckoo was forced to move on. The hummingbird correctly recognized the parasitic cuckoo as a threat to what we presumed was a nearby nest. |
| I did not encounter the species again until my visit to Panama in the summer of 2005. I stayed for several days in the remote village of La Rica, on the Caribbean Slope in the area known as El Copé. Striped Cuckoo was common there; I wish I could recall the colloquial name that my host, Santiago Navas, applied to the species, something along the lines of "hoo-HOO bird", or somesuch reflecting the resonant two-note call that I heard constantly during my stay. The species was abundant, but they were spooked quite easily, and I was lucky to capture even the mediocre image presented above. |
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