Cuckoo at Higbee

Photos © Todd Klein, all rights reserved.

This morning I had time to go birding at Higbee Beach Wildlife Management Area in Cape May for the first time in months. The fields were very different since my last visit in early June I think.

The plants were all going to seed, making a perfect food source for seed-eating birds, and this is a good place to see them usually, though there weren’t a lot around today.

Other birds prefer fruit, and there’s plenty of that, too. Virginia Creeper has berries that look like tiny grapes, though I wouldn’t advise eating them. Robins, thrashers and thrushes will be happy to, though. And there’s lots more, like poison ivy berries. Ever wonder how poison ivy spreads? Birds eat the berries and pass the seeds around.

All that natural food draws insects, and some birds prefer to eat those. I was lucky enough this morning to have great views of this yellow-billed cuckoo, which would usually be skulking behind leaves and in the shade, but today was out in the sunshine not far from the path. What was he doing?

Looking around carefully, and…

…there’s breakfast, a yummy (to him) caterpillar. Cuckoos love caterpillars. In fact, if you have tent caterpillars in your neighborhood, you probably have cuckoos eating them.