This is Bird Note.

This staccato call tells us there's a yellow-billed cuckoo nearby.

One of two species of cuckoos in the woodlands of North America.

The yellow-billed lives in broad broad leaf forests throughout the east and riparian

stands in the southwest. They were common breeding birds in the Pacific Northwest as late as the

1920s, but then they disappeared. Ornithologists still don't know why. The black-billed cuckoo is a more

northerly species living in dense woodland, even conifer forests.

Cuckoo's perch quietly and scan their surroundings for food.

Hairy tent caterpillars shunned by most birds are often on their meal ticket.

So, if you have an infestation of tent caterpillars,

you might see one of these slender brown and white birds with long white-spotted tails.

The cuckoo plucks a caterpillar from its tent and manipulates it back and forth at its bill,

taking off many of the bothersome hairs.

But some of them remain, and cuckoo stomachs are sometimes lined with these hairs.

When the hairs are dense enough to prevent digestion, the entire stomach lining is cast off and regurgitated.

Nature finds surprising ways to deal with problems.

For Bird Note, I'm Mary McCann.