The yellow-billed cuckoo is beginning to disappear from the wild, leading federal officials to reclassify the animals as threatened, providing the first federal protection for the birds.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service passed protections for the yellow-billed cuckoo under the Endangered Species Act. In August 2014, the agency announced a proposal to protect more than 500,000 acres of land in nine western states, part of an effort to protect the species.

"Yellow-billed cuckoos were once common along rivers all over the West, but because of our poor treatment of western rivers, they're now found in just a handful of places. With just a little more care, we can restore the rivers the cuckoo needs to survive, benefiting not just this unique songbird, but hundreds of other plants and animals and people too," Noah Greenwald, endangered species director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said.

Yellow-billed cuckoos are known for singing just before storms, earning the species its nickname of the rain crow. The birds make their homes in willow and cottonwood trees growing by the sides of moving waterways, such as streams and rivers. Such trees once grew in vast numbers throughout the western United States. Populations of the trees have been decimated by wildlife grazing, irrigation programs and dam construction.

Once common throughout western states, scattered populations of the animals now live in parts of California, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming.

Coccyzus americanus grow to lengths of over 10 inches, with long tails. The birds have white bellies and brown backs and wings. During winter months, members of the species head down to South America, where they spend the season, before returning to their native environment.

"Both the Yellow-billed and Black-billed cuckoos are fond of hairy caterpillars, and during outbreaks of tent caterpillars are valuable in helping to keep these creatures in check," Audubon Society officials wrote on its Web site.

Now listed as a threatened species, rain crow populations could soon start to improve, conservationists hope.

Efforts to protect declining species, managed by states and municipalities, are now eligible for federal credits. These credits can later be exchanged for conservation restrictions, when and if the species is later added to the national list of endangered animals.

"The petition to protect yellow-billed cuckoos was the first I ever worked on, back in 1998. I had no idea then that getting protection for this severely imperiled songbird would take 16 years, but I'm glad it finally has a great chance of recovering," Greenwald told the press in a statement.