BirdNote; Yellow-billed Cuckoo - Rain Crow

BirdNote®

The Rain Crow - The Yellow-billed Cuckoo

Written by Rick Wright

This is BirdNote.

[Yellow-billed Cuckoo, ML 110253]

The call of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo may sound a bit like a car engine struggling to turn over before revving to life. But for generations and generations, people recognized these rattling gulps and hollow hoots as a precursor to something else — rain.

[Yellow-billed Cuckoo, ML 209326]

For people in the American Midwest, the bird was known as the rain crow, and its call was a sure sign of incoming weather. Of course, Midwesterners don’t rely on birds to predict the weather today. But in a part of the world where the clouds can open suddenly and drop anything from discomfort to devastation, the bizarre croaking on a summer afternoon can still inspire a shiver.

[Yellow-billed Cuckoo, ML 539858]

Unfortunately, over much of this bird’s wide range, the voice of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo is heard less and less frequently.

The open woodlands and riparian areas where they nest have been replaced by productive fields and tidy lawns. Pesticides are also to blame.

But in the undeveloped stretches of the Midwest, watch for the slinky, slender form of the cuckoo — and listen hard for the evocative voice of the rain crow.

[Yellow-billed Cuckoo, ML 539858]

For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.

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Senior Producer: John Kessler

Production Manager: Allison Wilson

Editor: Ashley Ahearn

Producer: Mark Bramhill

Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone

Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Yellow-billed Cuckoo, ML 539858, recorded by Wilbur L. Hershberger; Yellow-billed Cuckoo, ML 110253, recorded by Wilbur L. Hershberger; Yellow-billed Cuckoo, ML 209326, recorded by Julia Ferguson.

BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.

© 2021 BirdNote January 2021 Narrator: Michael Stein

ID# YBCU-03-2021-01-25 YBCU-03