On July 5, 2025 I was at the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge in Imperial County, California, walking through the trees to the south of the large open field near the visitor center where snow geese are fed in the winter. I saw this bird which I immediately thought looked like a cuckoo in a tree. I kept moving around to try and get a better view of it and the bird kept moving to prevent that better look. It eventually flew away and I had a view of rust on the wing. I posted it on iNaturalist and had one identifier agree with me. I noted that the bill shape and color matched, the white throat and chest matched, I couldn't see white patches on the tail and the tail appeared a little short, but it could be a juvenile and when it flew I noticed rust color which is consistent with the wing panels.
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| Illustration from Birds of the World. |
Adults have a long tail, brown above and black and white below, a black curved bill with yellow, especially on the lower mandible. The head and upper parts are brown and the underparts are white. There is a yellow ring around the eye and cinnamon on the wings shows when it is in flight. Juveniles do have a less distinct undertail pattern and the undertail has gray where it is black on the adult.
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| Range from Birds of the World. |
Note that California has some small scattered areas where they breed, but it is very small and very scattered and not where the Salton Sea is located. Birds of the World notes, "Western populations have suffered severe range contractions during the twentieth century, and are already extirpated from British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. In California, this cuckoo once numbered more than 15,000 pairs, but the population has been reduced to about 40 pairs in less than 100 years, owing primarily to the destruction and degradation of preferred riparian habitat." iNaturalist does show a couple of other sightings near the Salton Sea and scattered other sightings in Southern California.
