Cuckoos

This group gathers Birds subcategory members belonging to the order Cuculiformes, the cuckoos, a family whose best-known members are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other bird species and leaving the host parents to raise the cuckoo chick, often at the expense of the host's own young. Not every member of this order shares that habit: it also spans the roadrunners, fast, largely ground-dwelling hunters of the arid Americas capable of running down snakes and lizards, and the malkohas and coucals, more typical forest and scrub cuckoos that build and tend their own nests like most other birds. Members of this group are found on every continent except Antarctica, with the greatest diversity concentrated in the tropics of Africa, Asia and the Americas.