A cuckoo chick’s call can be so loud and demanding when wanting food that it can persuade birds other than its foster parent to feed it. The male cuckoo is famous for its’ distinctive ‘koo-kooo’ call, which has been imitated by clockmakers world-wide (the cuckoo clock, where-by rather than the clock chiming, it will make a koo-kooo sound). Females have a bubbly chuckle sound different from the males.

Male Yellow-Billed Cuckoos make a distinctive series of hollow, wooden-sounding ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-kow-kow-kowlp-kowlp-kowlp-kowlp syllables. The whole series is quite slow and gets slower toward the end; calls can last up to about 8 seconds. Both members of nesting pairs give a metallic, rattling call, and a series of kow-kow-kow notes that sounds like a metal door knocker hitting a strike plate.