About Taccocua leschenaultii Lesson, 1830
The sirkeer cuckoo, Taccocua leschenaultii Lesson, 1830, measures approximately 42–45 centimetres (16+1⁄2–17+1⁄4 inches) in length. Its back, wings, and central tail feathers are dark olive brown, while its underside is rufous. A greenish gloss appears on the wings and dark portions of the tail feathers. All feathers have dark shafts, which are particularly visible as streaks on the breast. The tail is graduated, meaning outer feathers become sequentially shorter, and is broadly tipped with white; its upper tail coverts are long. The chin, throat, and breast are pale. The species' most distinctive feature is a curved red bill with a yellow tip. Long, curved bristles surround the eye, but do not extend behind it; these bristles resemble eyelashes, and are an adaptation to protect the eyes while the bird creeps through grass and vegetation. The iris is reddish brown. A short pale whitish streak runs above and below the eye, and a thin line of black feathers aligned with the bill's commissure extends under the eye. A dark bare patch of skin around the eye tapers behind it, making the eye appear larger than it actually is. The legs are grey, and the feet are zygodactyle. Sirkeer cuckoos forage on the ground, on rocks, or between grass and bushes in scrub and thin forest, often in hilly terrain, but generally stay below an altitude of about 1500 m above sea level. Their diet consists of caterpillars, insects and other invertebrates, small vertebrates, berries, and seeds. When disturbed, they creep through dense bushes and run along the ground, moving in a way that resembles a mongoose. Their flight is weak. They are normally very silent, but can produce a low buzzing zwik, or a sharp repeated kik or kek call with a tone similar to the calls of a rose-ringed parakeet. The order of primary feathers at the wing tip, from longest to shortest, is 7>6>5>8>4>3>2>1>9>10. Primary moult occurs from August to December, while a second moult takes place in April. Three subspecies are recognized. P. l. sirkee, found in northwestern India (Rajasthan, Gujarat) and Sind (Pakistan), is pale with a yellowish throat and breast. Populations in the Eastern Himalayas are darker and larger, and are treated as the subspecies infuscata, described by Edward Blyth; Latin scholars note this should be spelled infuscatus when the species is placed in the genus Phaenicophaeus. The nominate subspecies is intermediate in color, and is distributed across Peninsular India, extending into Sri Lanka. This species was placed in the genus Taccocua, erected by Lesson in 1831, though some authors place it in the genus Phaenicophaeus. The genus Taccocua was separated from Rhopodytes (usually merged into Phaenicophaeus) by its narrower bill base and a festoons on the base of the upper mandible. The generic name combines the French word taco, used for lizard cuckoos in the genus Coccyzus (formerly Saurothera), with the genus name Coua. The species epithet commemorates French botanist Jean Baptiste Leschenault de la Tour. The common name 'sirkeer' is claimed by James Jobling to come from the local name sirkee used for the bird in Gujarat, though Blanford noted that the supposed Indian names Surkool or Sircea recorded by Latham are untraceable. One theory holds that the name comes from the reeds called sirkanda (Saccharum sp., possibly S. bengalense Retz.) found in northern India, which are used to make curtain mats called sirkee (plural sirkean). Across much of northern India, the bird is known locally as junglee tota, meaning 'jungle parrot' or 'jungle parakeet', because its bill resembles that of the locally common rose-ringed parakeet. The species is distributed across most of the sub-Himalayan Indian subcontinent, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, and occurs patchily in Pakistan and Rajasthan. It is thought to have expanded into the Sind region in the 1930s after the construction of the Sukkur barrage and the extension of canal irrigation. Though three subspecies have been named, they vary only in coloration, show continuous variation, and have no disjunctions between their distribution ranges.
