Plate 169 – Mangrove Cuckoo

Before leaving Key West in early May of 1832, John James Audubon had been seeing a bird that he assumed was the Yellow-billed cuckoo (Plate 2). Being already well acquainted with the Yellow-billed cuckoo, Audubon resisted the need for trying to collect more specimens. But then Audubon was presented with a specimen of a bird that should have been a Yellow-billed cuckoo but definitely was not. “How vigilant the student of nature ought to be, when placed in a country previously unvisited by him.” Upon further study, Audubon was able to name what he considered a new species for science. While not a new species to science, Coccyzus minor is still what John James Audubon named the Mangrove cuckoo.