Diurnal and Seasonal Patterns of Calling Activity of Seven Cuculidae Species in a Forest of Eastern China

Abstract

There is very little information on the diurnal and seasonal patterns of Cuculidae species’ calling activity in subtropical areas. In this study, we used passive acoustic monitoring to investigate the diurnal and seasonal patterns of calling activity of seven Cuculidae species at three sites in eastern China’s forest over a year. Our results showed that these species exhibited significant diurnal variations except for Cuculus micropterus. Eudynamys scolopaceus and Cuculus saturatus increased their vocal activity at dawn and dusk, whereas the other four species peaked their calling activity in the morning. Five species showed significant seasonal variations with a peak in vocal activities earlier in the season (late May or early June) and a gradual decline after that, except for Clamator coromandus, which displayed two peaks in seasonal calling activity. As for Cuculus micropterus, its calling activity was not significantly related to the season. Our study has provided basic knowledge about the calling patterns of seven Cuculidae species, and based on seasonal changes in vocal activity we propose that the breeding season of these species in east China begins in late May and ends in July.

Acoustic niche partitioning among seven cuckoo species in a forest in eastern China

“…Although songs of Asian Koel and Indian Cuckoo have similar frequencies and daily temporal distribution, they do not overlap in acoustic niche space. Large Hawk-Cuckoo and Lesser Cuckoo were separated in seasonal distribution (Mei et al 2022). We suggest that the seven species may have flexible mechanisms to partition their acoustic niche in multiple dimensions (Chitnis et al 2020).…”

“…Finally, Chesnut-winged Cuckoo gives a harsh metallic 'koo-ree' call . See Figure S2 and Mei et al (2022) for spectral characteristics of typical calls of these species. Some of these species have different call types (Huang et al 2017) or female and male individuals have different calls (Yoo et al 2020), and in our study we only considered male cuckoos' calls or the most common call type because males typically call much more frequently than females (Yoo et al 2020) and the vocal activity of females has little effect on overlap.…”

“…The distance between recorders was more than 1 km to avoid possible signal overlap. At each site, the recorder was tied to a tree trunk and scheduled to record the first 5 min of every half-hour daily from 5 April 2019 to 30 March 2020 (Mei et al 2022). For our analyses of acoustic overlap, we extracted recordings for a 2-week period (29 May 2019 to 13 June 2019) with high density of vocal activity of the study species (Mei et al 2022).…”

Actividad de vocalización del Burgo (Momotus momota) en la Selva pedemontana de Yungas del Parque Nacional Calilegua

“…lluvias, temperatura, humedad), el establecimiento de territorios para atraer parejas, para localizar alimento o alertar sobre la presencia de posibles depredadores (Keast 1994;La 2012;Voigt et al, 2021). Las especies de aves diurnas vocalizan mayormente al amanecer y al atardecer, cuando los niveles de luz solar son bajos; como así también, debido a que las bajas temperaturas en estos momentos del día hacen más efectiva la transmisión del sonido (Clark 2012;Mei et al, 2022). Mientras que las lluvias de mediana o fuerte intensidad pueden reducir la actividad vocal, debido a la interferencia acústica que provoca el ruido producido por las gotas de agua al caer sobre la vegetación (Vokurková et al, 2018).…”

Birds in Temperate and Tropical Forests: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Another study from China conducted an inter-species comparison of the calling activity of seven Cuculidae species that use nesting parasitism [3]. The authors clearly showed that both diurnal and temporal patterns of the calling activities differed among the species.…”