Neomorphus

A small group of Neotropical ground-cuckoos—large, long-tailed cuckoos that live mostly on the forest floor in the humid forests of Central and South America. What makes them special is how “invisible” they can be: despite their size, they’re famously hard to see, because they move quietly in deep shade and freeze when they sense danger. They’re built for this lifestyle: long legs for running, a strong body for pushing through leaf litter, and a tail that helps them balance as they sprint and stop. Their home is usually a primary, wet forest, the kind with thick understory and lots of fallen leaves—perfect cover for a bird that prefers staying low and secretive.

Neomorphus includes several species with small or patchy ranges, such as the rufous-vented, scaled, red-billed, banded, and rufous-winged ground-cuckoos. Even though they look a bit like “Asian ground-cuckoos,” they are not closely related—a neat example of how similar forest lifestyles can shape unrelated birds in similar ways. They’re not the typical “cuckoo” people imagine either: instead of focusing on loud calling or open-country life, these birds are more like forest shadows. When seen well, they can be striking—many have bold face patterns, rich chestnut or rufous wings, and dramatic tail markings—but they usually reveal themselves only in quick glimpses.

Their feeding behavior is one of the coolest things about them. Neomorphus ground-cuckoos are serious hunters of the forest floor, eating mainly insects and other small creatures, and some species also take small vertebrates (like lizards and frogs) and occasionally fallen fruit. A famous “fun fact” is that they may follow army-ant swarms—not to eat the ants, but to catch insects and other prey that flee the marching ants. Another wild association reported for the banded ground-cuckoo is following peccary herds, likely for the same reason: bigger animals disturb the forest floor and flush food into the open.