Meet Diederik Cuckoo, One Of The Most Beautiful Bird In The World

This article is about Diederik cuckoo (Chrysococcyx caprius). I wrote it for two reasons: to talk a bit about beauty of this amazing bird and to illustrate something about these birds biology. They are more than just pretty colours. Diederik cuckoo are inter-African migrants that are coming back to SA around now (October), and their breeding season is about to get started. So it is a good time to learn something about them.

Darwin described a type of selection that he called sexual selection, which is a mode of natural selection where typically members of one gender choose mates of the other gender with whom to mate. It is often the female who makes the decision to mate, and this is referred to as sexual selection by female choice. In Diederik cuckoo, sexual selection by female choice is likely the reason for the males having more gaudy colours, as well as for the ritual feeding behaviour.