[3] The specific epithet mechowi honours Friedrich Wilhelm Alexander von Mechow, a Prussian explorer.

The head, nape and upperparts are dark brown, washed sooty-grey and with a purple-blue iridescence.

[1] Populations west of the Bakossi Mountains, in northwestern Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo, are now considered a distinct species, the whistling long-tailed cuckoo (C. lemaireae) due to their differing calls.

It eats caterpillars, ants, beetles, spiders, snails and seeds and joins mixed-species foraging flocks.

[3] Its calls include hu hee wheeu and a series of notes that accelerates and then slows and descends.

The blue-headed crested flycatcher, brown illadopsis and possibly the forest robin have been observed as hosts.