A chick of the Horsfield’s hawk cuckoo displays a gape-coloured patch on the underside of the wing to a blue-and-white flycatcher host when begging.(37.3MB, 00:00:04)Shot Date: 2005/08/09 Shot Location: Oyama, Shizuoka | ||
| species Cuculus fugax Key Words | ||
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Animalia >Chordata >Aves >Cuculiformes >Cuculidae >Cuculus >
The Horsfield's hawk cuckoo is an obligate brood parasite endemic to East Asia, which parasitizes some small 'blue birds' such as the blue-and-white flycatcher or the red-flanked bushrobin. A nestling of this cuckoo species has a naked patch of the same colour as its own gape on the underside of the wing. By raising and shivering the wing, the chick displays the patch to its host parents as they deliver food to the nest. This an extraordinary begging display is intensified as the chick grows hungrier, and host parents, in turn, reduce food provisioning when the patch is experimentally dyed black to cancel the signal. The display of the wing patch presumably simulates multiple gapes in the nests, thus induces host parents into allocating extra provisioning.
Tanaka KD, Morimoto G, Ueda K, 2005. Yellow wing-patch of a nestling Horsfield's hawk cuckoo Cuculus fugax induces miscognition by hosts: mimicking a gape? J. Avian Biol. 36: 461-464 [DOI: 10.1111/j.2005.0908-8857.03439.x]
Tanaka KD, Ueda K, 2005. Horsfield's hawk-cuckoo nestlings simulate multiple gapes for begging. Science 308: 653 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1109957]
(Data No.momo060120cf01b)
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