| Whistling long-tailed cuckoo | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Cuculiformes |
| Family: | Cuculidae |
| Genus: | Cercococcyx |
| Species: | C. lemaireae |
| Binomial name | |
| Cercococcyx lemaireae | |
The whistling long-tailed cuckoo (Cercococcyx lemaireae) is a species of cuckoo in the family Cuculidae. It is distributed in West Africa and western Central Africa, from west of the Bakossi Mountains in Cameroon west to Sierra Leone. [1] [2]
It was formerly thought to be a disjunct western population of the dusky long-tailed cuckoo (C. mechowi), which it is morphologically indistinguishable from, but it was later split from C. mechowi on account of its different vocalizations. The whistling long-tailed cuckoo has two distinct songs: one described by Nigel James Collar and Peter Boesman as a song of "three rising notes" (phoneticized as "hu hee wheeu") and a Halcyon kingfisher-esque song described by Collar and Boesman as "plaintive whinnying" (phoneticized as "tiutiutiutiutittiui-tiu-tiu-tiu"). On the other hand, the dusky long-tailed cuckoo has two different songs: a song described by Collar and Boesman as "three similar, less melodious notes" (phoneticized as "wheet-wheet-wheet") and a fast, descending song (phoneticized as "wheewheewheewheewhee"). These song differences led to the description of C. lemaireae as a distinct species. [2] [3]
