1788) – breeds North, South, Stewart Island, satellites and Chatham Islands (east of South Island; New Zealand): winters to east Australia, New Guinea, D'Entrecasteaux Archipelago (east of southeast New Guinea), Bismarck Archipelago including Admiralty Islands and Solomon Islands Description Hard to spot and easier to hear, the shining bronze cuckoo is in overall length, has a wingspan of and weighs around . It is slightly larger than Horsfield's bronze cuckoo (Chrysococcyx basalis). It has metallic golden or coppery green upperparts and white cheeks and underparts barred with dark green. The female is similar with a more purplish sheen to the crown and nape and bronzer-tinged barring on the belly. The bill is black and the feet are black with yellow undersides. Distribution and habitat The shining bronze cuckoo is a summer visitor to Eastern Australia from the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland to South Australia's Eyre Peninsula and Kangaroo Island and Tasmania, as well as Western Australia from Carnarvon in the north to the southwest and east to Esperance. These winter in the Lessa Sunda Islands and New Guinea. New Zealand populations winter in the Solomon Islands and arrive in New Zealand from mid August, though they are not common until October. They spread out to Stewart and Chatham Islands and are found to an altitude of 4000 ft. The island races, layardi in New Caledonia, Vanuatu and some of the islands of the Solomon Islands, and harterti of Rennell and Bellona Islands in the Solomons, are non-migratory. Behaviour and ecology Breeding A female shining bronze cuckoo lays a single egg in a host nest and removes a host egg. After hatching, the baby cuckoo ejects the host nestlings from the nest. The grey warbler is a common host species in New Zealand, the shining bronze cuckoos missing the first but parasitising heavily the second broods of the season (55% of nests in a study in Kaikoura). Fieldwork near Kaikoura showed that the dark colour of cuckoo eggs seemed to serve to protect cuckoo eggs from being removed by other cuckoos in grey warbler nests rather than the hosts. A test using model eggs of different tones showed that the hosts did not reject eggs, but that cuckoos removed eggs of brighter colours. The dark matte cuckoo eggs are hard to see in the shadows of a grey warbler nest. The Chatham Island warbler is a host species in the