A Modern Day Rare Bird Story
Common cuckoos may be common in Europe and Asia but they are decidedly rare in the U.S. Individual birds have been found only four times including this one from Long Island, New York, in October, 2025. Courtesy of Amy Simmons
Africa is where common cuckoos are supposed to spend the winter. This immature bird ended up on a golf course on Long Island, New York, instead. Courtesy of Amy Simmons
Common cuckoos may be common in Europe and Asia but they are decidedly rare in the U.S. Individual birds have been found only four times including this one from Long Island, New York, in October, 2025. Courtesy of Amy Simmons
Africa is where common cuckoos are supposed to spend the winter. This immature bird ended up on a golf course on Long Island, New York, instead. Courtesy of Amy Simmons
There have been some very interesting rare birds spotted here in Maine over the last week or so. A MacGillivray’s warbler, the western sibling species to the mourning warbler that breeds in the state and a great rarity here in Maine, was found in Yarmouth. It’s been delighting birders for a few days. Two Eurasian wigeon are loafing in a beaver pond behind a school in Gray. A clapper rail was just found in Scarborough. An eared grebe was at the Sanford sewage treatment plant, at least until a few days ago. All of these wonders kept some birders very busy over the weekend.
But it was news of a bird from New York State that caught our attention. A little over a week ago, a golfer on a course near Riverhead on Long Island spotted a bird that looked weird to him. In the old days he might have noted it and maybe told his ornithologist nephew about it months later at a family gathering. Depending on how well his uncle described it, the nephew would probably have shrugged his shoulders and said he didn’t know what it was, If the uncle had told him he thought it was an exceedingly rare bird from Europe and Asia, the nephew would have shrugged his shoulders and thought to himself, “He didn’t get the description right.”
That’s what might have happened in the old days.
In 2025 the story is different. In this version, the uncle snaps a photo of the odd-looking bird and sends it to his ornithologist nephew in California. Nephew can’t believe his uncle has just seen an exceedingly rare bird from Europe and Asian and immediately alerts fellow ornithologist/birders including friends from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
It turns out that the bird is something called the common cuckoo, a species that had only been found three times in the Lower 48. One sighting was in California, but remarkably, the other two were within 120 miles of the sighting in Riverhead, on Long Island. They were in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
We don’t know the full sequence of events that alerted the world to this surprising find, but we know that our friend, Jay McGowan, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, got to see it and photograph it as he was thanked by many birders and quoted in at least one of the many articles that have already been written about this amazing find. Not to embarrass Jay, but we remember when he was a wee lad who looked like he might tip over from the weight of his binoculars. Now he is one of the top field ornithologists in North America and a curator at the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Hundreds of birders flocked to the area to look for the cuckoo including many of our other friends from New York. It was seen for several days but, as far as we know, hadn’t been found since a few days before Halloween.
Interestingly, a common cuckoo was found in far northeastern Quebec in late September of 2013. The species has also been recorded in the Lesser Antilles—twice on Barbados (both in November) and twice on Guadalupe (one late October and one November).
Common cuckoos breed across Europe and Asia and winter in Africa. They are striking birds, unlike just about anything we have here in North America, although as our friend Jay pointed out in one newspaper article, they might be mistaken for a hawk because of their long tail and hooked bill. The few that have ended up on this side of the Atlantic are presumably migrants that either get turned around or get caught up in a weather system and flung to our side of the world.
What a cool bird to see. When do you think one will show up here in Maine?
Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Vice President of Boreal Conservation for National Audubon. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. He is a coauthor of the seminal “Birds of Maine” book and author of the “Birder’s Conservation Handbook.” His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization working statewide to protect the nature of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the popular books, “Maine’s Favorite Birds” (Down East Books) and “Birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao: A Site and Field Guide,” (Cornell University Press).
