I watched “Scarface”, a movie with Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer (among others) about 40 years back while still in Kenya and, just to confirm that I am getting to the fossil state, we rented a video from a library somewhere in Nairobi.

As I have forgotten the plot I decided to have another go at it as I found it in Netflix. As often happens, after a while, I started remembering it and, somehow, after the first hour, I was loosing interest. I was about to stop it when I was surprised by what I heard! This was not another of the rarther abundant bad words in the movie but some other sound that I found, somehow out of place!

The scene in question takes place in Cochabamba (Bolivia) when Tony Montana (Pacino) is discussing a drug deal with Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar) the producer of the cocaine. While they are finalizing the deal, seated in Sosa´s mansion, between a few “f” words, I, somehow, heard the call of a bird with which I am very familiar with.

Nothing wrong with that you may think. However, the bird, as far as I know, only occurs in Africa!

Below I embedded the relevant part of the movie that, luckily, it was already selected by “Popcorn Picks”, a YouTube video channel to who I give credit (I would not know how to extract a piece of a movie).

I regret thatr this is a rather violent moment of the film and, to avoid you watching this, I recommend you to go almost to the end (5:54) in the clip below and then, again around 5:57 just when Sosa tells Tony “I only tell you one time, don´t f… with me Tony”.

Despite other background noises and the music, I believe that I hear the call of the red-chested cuckoo or rain bird (Cuculus solitarius), also known in South Africa as “”Piet-my-vrou”, an onomatopeic name that mimicks it call that you can hear below:

Embedded from YouTube (credit: Birding with Lynette Rudman).

In my surprise, trying to see where this part of the movie was filmed, I consulted https://www.imdb.com where abundant information on “Scarface” is found. I learnt there that the scene in question was filmed at 656 Park Lane, Santa Barbara, California, USA, not an area where you expect to find a rain bird. However, another cuckoo, the yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus), is present there but its call is totally different.

I admit that I can be mistaken but I find this an unusual and interesting find for being totaly unexpected. So, how could we explain it? I see a few options, including that what I heard was just a combination of other bird sounds that, somehow, mimicked the rain bird. Another, more likely, is that one of the aviaries (there are a few in Santa Barbara) or a private individual nearby was keeping a red-chested cuckoo. The final possibility is that the film makers used background sounds from their sound library, irrespective of its origin.

I just consider this as an unusual event that we would probably never unravel but I will appreciate any ideas or information you may have.