Hi friends.  Guilt, that most powerful of personal motivators, has compelled me to write up a new bird header for you all.  Our bird this week is the Sumatran ground-cuckoo.  This bird is large, around 55cm (22 inches) in length and true to its name, lives in dense mountainside forests on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.  It has been found at elevations between 300-1,400 m (975-4,600ft), but all of the few recent sightings have been near the top of this range.  

The Sumatran ground cuckcoo was until recently thought to be the same species as the Bornean ground cuckoo.  I’m not sure how the determination was made, both birds are seldom spotted by people.  Our subject this week is especially illusive, not being seen or photographed between 1916 and 1997.  It was spotted in 2017 by an automated camera in Batang Gadis National Park in North Sumatra, where it had not previously been know to live.  Its diet is thought to consist of the usual, as it were, invertebrates, reptiles and small mammals.  The Sumatran ground cuckoo is considered critically endangered, and estimates put its population at 50-250 individuals. 

The greatest threat to this bird is deforestation, as land is cleared for farming and various kinds of plantations, including palm oil and pulpwood, a generic term for trees harvested for a variety of uses.  It also may fall victim to traps set for more common birds, since it hunts on the ground.  Indeed, its call was first recorded in 2007 when a trapper brought one of the birds to biologists working with the Wildlife Conservancy Society.  Some of its habitat overlaps with existing national parks, but little is known about how to protect the Sumatran ground-cuckoo since so little is known about it in general.  The one bright spot, I guess, is that like its Bornean cousin, the Sumatran cuckoo engages in “unobtrusive behavior” and we are hopefully undercounting its population because it is so good at hiding.  Be good to each other and have a good weekend.

Links: https://tinyurl.com/j6zvvyta, https://tinyurl.com/3shuc8vc, https://tinyurl.com/yd8r4eym