''Piaya'' is a small

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

of relatively large and long-tailed

cuckoo Cuckoos are birds in the Cuculidae family, the sole taxon in the order Cuculiformes . The cuckoo family includes the common or European cuckoo, roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals and anis. The coucals and anis are sometimes separ ...

s, which occur in

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

. The two species in taxonomic order are: The

little cuckoo The little cuckoo (''Coccycua minuta'') is a species of bird in the cuckoo family (Cuculidae) from South America and Panama. It was formerly placed in the genus '' Piaya'', but was moved to the reinstated genus ''Coccycua'' following the discover ...

has been found to be closer to some species traditionally placed in ''

Coccyzus ''Coccyzus'' is a genus of cuckoos which occur in the Americas. The genus name is from Ancient Greek ''kokkuzo'', which means to call like a common cuckoo. The genus includes the lizard cuckoos that were formerly included in the genus ''Sauroth ...

'' or ''Micrococcyx''. These are now again separated in ''

Coccycua ''Coccycua'' is a small genus of birds in the cuckoo family (biology), family, Cuculidae. Its three species are found in the tropical Americas. Formerly, they were divided among in ''Coccyzus'' (two species) and ''Piaya'' (one species), or the ...

''.

Description and ecology

These

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

s are birds with relatively slender bodies, long tails and strong legs. The black-bellied cuckoo is essentially restricted to rainforest, but the more widespread squirrel cuckoo also occurs in other forest types, woodlands or

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in severa ...

s. ''Piaya'' cuckoos, unlike many Old World species, are not brood parasites; they build their own nests in trees and lay two eggs. Parasitic cuckoos lay coloured eggs to match those of their

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by th ...

hosts, but the non-parasitic ''Piaya'' species, like most other non-passerines, lay white eggs. These are vocal species with persistent and loud calls. They feed on large

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

s such as

cicada The cicadas () are a superfamily, the Cicadoidea, of insects in the order Hemiptera (true bugs). They are in the suborder Auchenorrhyncha, along with smaller jumping bugs such as leafhoppers and froghoppers. The superfamily is divided into tw ...

wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. ...

s and caterpillars (including those with stinging hairs or spines which are distasteful to many birds). Squirrel and black-bellied cuckoos are large and powerful species, and occasionally take

vertebrate Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with c ...

prey such as small lizards.

References

* * * Stiles and Skutch, ''A guide to the birds of Costa Rica'' {{Taxonbar, from=Q2328331 Bird genera * Taxa named by René Lesson