Grey-bellied Cuckoo

The grey-bellied cuckoo, or Indian plaintive cuckoo, is one of the smaller cuckoos at about 23cm. Adults are mainly grey with a white lower belly and undertail and a white patch on the wing. Some females instead are reddish-brown above with dark bars, an unbarred tail and strongly barred whitish underparts. Juveniles resemble these females but are a duller grey. It is a noisy bird with a persistent, loud pee-pip-pee-pee call, given with the tail held down (Wikipedia, general species account).

It prefers light woodland and cultivated areas. It is a brood parasite that uses warblers as hosts and lays a single egg, and it feeds on a variety of insects and caterpillars. It is a short-distance migrant: birds breeding further north and on higher ground are summer visitors that move to warmer areas for the winter. SoIB 2023 treats it as endemic to the Indian subcontinent, resident in India with local movements, finds its long-term trend stable, and rates it a Low conservation priority (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).