Distribution

South America east of Andes, from Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, amd French Guyana south to eastern Ecuador, eastern Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and northeastern Argentina.

Within this vast region, the distribution of the Pavonine Cuckoo is curiously patchy, especially in northern South America. In Colombia, an apparently disjunct population recently was discovered at 1450-1825 m in the northern Cordillera Central, Department of Antioquia (Cuervo et al. 2008).  It also occurs in the Sierra de Perijá on the Colombia/Venezuela border; it is better known on the Venezuela side (Hilty 2003), but there also is a single specimen from the Colombia side of the Perijá, collected by M. A. Carriker Jr. in 1941 at 1225 m (Cuervo et al. 2008; ORNIS). There are a few sight records from the Andes in Venezuela (Hilty 2003). Elsewhere in northern Venezuela, the Pavonine Cuckoo occurs on both slopes of the coastal cordillera in Aragua and Miranda, and in the adjacent interior cordillera (Hilty 2003). The Pavonine Cuckoo also occurs from coastal Guyana (Snyder 1966) and French Guiana (Payne 2005; A. Renaudier, pers. comm.) southwest across southeastern Venezuela (Hilty 2003) and into northern Brazil. The Pavonine Cuckoo apparently has not been reported from Suriname.

In Ecuador the Pavonine Cuckoo is known only from a specimen, collected in 1923, from Napo Province (Ridgely and Greenfield 2001) and a sight record from the Cordillera del Condor, Morona-Santiago Province (Schulenberg and Awbrey 1997). The distribution is more continuous from northeastern Peru (primarily south of the Amazon?) east into Brazil and south into northern Bolivia. It also occurs from south central Brazil in Mato Grosso, Goiás and Minas Gerais south to Paraguay and northern Argentina (Payne 2005).

Endemic to the Americas.

Understory of humid lowland tropical evergreen forest, montane evergreen forest and thickets with dense secondary woodland to 1600 m (Payne 2005).

No information.

No information.