The Fan-tailed Cuckoo is the common large cuckoo that inhabits the shrubby layers of forests and woodlands of eastern and south-western Australia. In spring and summer their distinctive repeated trilling calls are a constant reminder of their presence. Otherwise fairly unobtrusive, they sit still on a vantage point for quite long periods on a constant lookout for food, often a caterpillar but a variety of arthropods are eaten.

Fan-tailed Cuckoos can parasitise a large number of different hosts, mainly those that build domed nests including scrubwrens, fairy-wrens and thornbills.

Adult males are darker coloured than females, some of them so richly coloured that in northern Australia some people get them confused with the closely related Chestnut-breasted Cuckoo.