Appearance
Klaas's cuckoo is 16–18 cm in length. The species exhibits sexual dimorphism. Males have a glossy green body with few markings and plain white underparts. Females have a bronze-brown body, greenish wing coverts and faintly barred white underparts. Viewed in flight, the male is largely white with dark primaries and females appear mostly brown. Males and females both have a small white post-ocular patch.
Naming
The species was named by French explorer François Le Vaillant in 1806, in his book in recognition of his Khoikhoi servant and assistant, named Klaas, who found the type specimen. Le Vaillant wrote:"...my friend Klaas... Receive my homage to you here... May naturalists preserve for the species I am going to describe, the name I give it, and thus consecrate the services you have rendered me: they will prove to me by this that my work has had some value in their eyes."Le Vaillant's wish was honoured when the bird's first binomial name, "Cuculus klaas", was applied by James Francis Stephens in 1815, and the tribute to Klaas has persisted to the present binomial.
The bird is the first known case of a species being named after an Indigenous individual, and Le Vaillant is the only colonial biologist to name bird species after local people.
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