American Yellow-billed Cuckoo - 1894

Coayzus americanns

A very rare waif from America.

Only one in the county, and this is the specimen that is in the Gallery of British Birds at the South Kensington Natural History Museum, labelled " The Carolina Cuckoo," having been presented by Lord Cawdor, on whose estate at Stackpole it was obtained in 1832 or 1833. Mr. Tracy gives the following particulars of its capture in the Zoologist for 1850: "The specimen from which Mr. Yarrell figured his bird was killed by my brother near Stackpole Court. I first noticed it on the top of an ash tree in the act of feeding on some small insects on the wing very similar to the Golden-crests. Seeing it appeared a nondescript, it was shot immediately, and nothing more observed as to its habits." This species of Cuckoo rears its own young, a brood of six or eight in number.

Mathew M.A. 1894, Birds of Pembrokeshire and it's Islands