Today's Bird: Yellow-Billed Cuckoo

Today's Bird is the Yellow-Billed Cuckoo!  I had a cuckoo clock when I was a kid but never really worried too much about what actual cuckoos looked like.  Turns out, they're pretty big.  I saw this bird on South Padre Island on a day when I was plagued by small birds (mostly flycatchers) that can only be identified by sound and, of course, they weren't singing.  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the branches on a nearby tree flop and bend.  I raced over and as soon as I got my binoculars on it, I knew for sure what it was...I'd passed it a bazillion times in the bird guide thinking, "I won't see one of these any time soon."  Lucky for me, I live in one of the greatest migration zones in the country.  I took this picture on May 5th, 2012.