Birds

Western Yellow-billed Cuckoo

A bird in peril.

One of the saddest things we’ve witness here in California in recent years is the decline of the once-plentiful Western Yellow-billed Cuckoo; a jay-sized, long-tailed bird with large white spots on the underside of its tail. This year the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service listed the species, in part because of Audubon's advocacy around the issue. Audubon California's Kern River Preserve has worked on increasing Western Yellow-billed Cuckoo numbers in Califronia since the 1980s, primarily through the restoration of the Great Valley cottonwood forest along the South Fork of the Kern River.