FreeLists / birdky / [birdky] FW: Bird ID help - cuckoo?

["Patti Bell" <pbjoin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Apparently my web host is being unreliable...if the link below doesn't work
this one is an alternative:
http://tinyurl.com/33ophu

-----Original Message-----
From: Patti Bell [mailto:pbjoin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 11:15 PM
To: birdky@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Bird ID help - cuckoo?


If anyone is willing to help...I've got a bad photo of a bird at Land
Between the Lakes this weekend...on a forested lakeshore.  I'm still a
beginner (I wonder how long I can get away with saying that); or at least
I'm still finding plenty of opportunities for life birds.  This is one, but
unfortunately I can't positively ID it.  I think it's a Cuckoo, but I never
saw it at an angle where I could see the underside of its tail, nor did I
ever see it in flight...it just made short hops while foraging, and
eventually ended up in a dense canopy where I lost it.  

The bill looked dark to me, so my first guess was Black-billed Cuckoo.  Then
a closer check of the Sibley range maps indicates that bird should only be
here during migration, and it seems too early for that.  Sibley also says
the juvenile Yellow-billed Cuckoo has a dark bill for a few weeks.  At one
point, while watching this bird, when he turned his head to catch the light
just the right way, I thought his eye looked red, but then I never saw that
again and in all subsequent views his eye simply looked dark.

Is there anything else in this picture or clues I should be trying to
remember that might help me identify it?  Is it possible, or likely, that a
Black-billed Cuckoo would be at LBL?

Here's the picture:
http://www.bellhanley.com/cuckoo.jpg

Thanks!!

---------------
Patti Bell
Louisville, KY
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