This cuckoo is found in Southeast Asia, New Guinea and some parts of Australia, where its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest.

[2] The little bronze cuckoo's range covers Southeast Asia, New Guinea and northern and eastern Australia.

In terms of habitat, the little bronze cuckoo prefers open woodlands, forest edges, and scrubby areas with dense vegetation.

[8] In fact, Gerygones, their main hosts, also reflect an unusually high level of speciation which could signal an evolutionary arms race against their brood parasites.

[9] Genetic analyses have shown that it is most closely related to the white-eared bronze cuckoo (Chrysococcyx meyerii).

[10] C. m russatus  is also sometimes considered to be a synonym of C. m poecilurus but remains recognized as a distinct subspecies by the International Ornithologists' Union.

[11] The subspecies C. m salavdorii is occasionally placed with the species C. crassirostris but morphologically more closely resembles the little bronze cuckoo.

[11] The pied bronze cuckoo (Chalcites crassirostris) was formerly considered as a subspecies but differs from C. minutillus in coloration and vocalizations.

[6] List of the eleven subspecies recognized by the International Ornithologists' Union:[11] The little bronze cuckoo is insectivorous and feeds on ants, bees, sawflies, wasps, ladybugs, true bugs as well as butterflies and their caterpillars.

[6] Superb fairywrens, common hosts of the little bronze cuckoo, will call to their eggs before they hatch to teach them vocalizations that are used to separate them from brood parasites post-hatching.

One explanation for the behavior is that members of this species do not raise their young and they have dense populations so finding multiple mates is not an issue.

[13] The little bronze cuckoo also lays its eggs within a large time window, anytime between the morning and afternoon.

[7] As a brood parasite, the little bronze cuckoo lays its eggs in nests constructed and tended to by other bird species.

[6] In Australia the little bronze cuckoo has been recorded travelling through the Torres Straight and for this reason is reported to occasionally migrate.

The difficulties with finding evidence to resolve this issue are made worse by the morphological similarities between subspecies.