Parasitism strategies of the Fan-tailed Cuckoo Cacomantis flabelliformis

The Fan-tailed Cuckoo Cacomantis flabelliformis inhabits thick forest, and nothing is known about how it finds the nests of its hosts, or whether it monitors the nests that it does find. We studied this cuckoo, and its hosts, for 8 breeding seasons between 2007 (August 2007-January 2008 inclusive) and 2014 (August 2014-January 2015 inclusive) on a 10-ha site in a coastal forest of south-eastern Australia, near Moruya, New South Wales. For three of these seasons, nests were monitored with cameras. The Cuckoo was recorded at the nests of only its four putative hosts at the site (White-browed Scrubwren Sericornis frontalis, Brown Thornbill Acanthiza pusilla, Superb Fairy-wren Malurus cyaneus and Variegated Fairy-wren M. lamberti). It parasitised only the nests of the White-browed Scrubwren and Brown Thornbill, but it removed either eggs or young from all other nests at which it was recorded. There was no correlation between any measure of nest activity for a host species, and parasitism of that species, and cameras at nests recorded no evidence of nest monitoring by the Cuckoo. We conclude that individual Cuckoos may be host-specific, and that the parasitism strategy is enigmatic, but is possibly haphazard and inefficient. As a result, the Fan-tailed Cuckoo finds most host nests too late for successful parasitism, it spoils them to re-instigate building, and is by default a major nest-predator.