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Himalayan Monal (Lophophorus impejanus)

by birdinfo • May 9, 2014 • 0 Comments

The Himalayan Monal (Lophophorus impejanus) also known as the Impeyan Monal, Impeyan Pheasant, and Danphe, is a bird in the pheasant family, Phasianidae. It is the national bird of Nepal, where it is known as Danphe andstate bird of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, INDIA, where it is known as Monal.

Traditionally, the Himalayan Monal has been classified as monophyletic. However, studies have shown that the male Himalayan Monal of northwestern India lacks the white rump of other Himalayan Monals, and it has more green on the breast, indicating the possibility of a second subspecies. The scientific name commemorates Lady Mary Impey, the wife of the British chief justice of Bengal, Sir Elijah Impey.

It is a relatively large-sized pheasant. The bird is about 70 centimeters long. The male weighs up to 2380 grams and the female 2150. The adult male has multicoloured plumage throughout, while the female, as in other pheasants, is dull in colour. Notable features in the male include a long, metallic green crest, coppery feathers on the back and neck, and a prominent white rump that is most visible when the bird is in flight. The tail feathers of the male are uniformly rufous, becoming darker towards the tips, whereas the lower tail coverts of females are white, barred with black and red. The female has a prominent white patch on the throat and a white strip on the tail. The first-year male and the juvenile resemble the female, but the first-year male is larger and the juvenile is less distinctly marked.

The bird’s natural range extends from eastern Afghanistan through the Himalayas in Pakistan, Kashmir region and the Republic of India (states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh), Nepal, southernTibet, and Bhutan. There is also a report of its occurrence in Burma.

It occupies upper temperate oak-conifer forests interspersed with open grassy slopes, cliffs and alpine meadows between 2400 and 4500 meters, where it is most common between 2700 and 3700 meters. It may descend to 2000 meters in the winter. It tolerates snow and will dig through it to obtain plant roots and invertebrate prey.

The breeding season is April through August, and they generally form pairs at this time. In winter they congregate in large coveys and roost communally.

In some areas, the species is threatened due to poaching and other anthropogenic factors. In a recent study, the local population responded negatively to human disturbance involving hydroelectric power development.[3] The male Monal was under hunting pressure in Himachal Pradesh, where the crest feather was used to decorate men’s hats, until 1982, when hunting was banned in the state.

In Pakistan the bird is most common in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province but it can also be found in Kaghan, Palas Valley, and Azad Kashmir. The pheasant is not considered endangered in the region and can be easily located. In some areas, the population density of the species is as high as five pairs per square mile. The main threat to the species is poaching, as the crest is valuable here, as well. It is thought to bring status to its wearer, and is a symbol of authority.

Emerald Toucanet (Aulacorhynchus prasinus)

by birdinfo • May 8, 2014 • 0 Comments

The Emerald Toucanet (Aulacorhynchus prasinus) is a near-passerine bird occurring in mountainous regions from Mexico, through Central America, to northern Venezuela and along the Andes as far south as central Bolivia. Some taxa currently included in this species are sometimes split into separate species (see Taxonomy).

Like other toucans, the Emerald Toucanet is brightly marked and has a large bill. The adult is 30–35 cm (12–14 in) long and weight can range from 118–230 g (4.2–8.1 oz) The sexes are alike in appearance, although the female generally is smaller and slightly shorter-billed. It is, as other members of the genus Aulacorhynchus, mainly green. The vent and tail-tip are rufous. The bill is black with yellow to the upper mandible (amount depends on the exact subspecies) and, in all except the nominate (prasinus) and wagleri groups (see Taxonomy), a white band at the base of the bill. The members of the caeruleogularis group have a rufous patch near the base of the upper mandible, while some members of the albivitta group have a rufous patch near the base of the lower mandible. The throat is white in the nominate and the wagleri group, blue in the caeruleogularis and cognatus group, pale grey-blue in the lautus group, blue or black in the atrogularis group, and white or grey-blue in the albivitta group. The eye-ring ranges from blue to red, in some subspecies very dark, almost appearing blackish from a distance. The legs are dull greyish and the iris is dark.

Juveniles are duller, including the throat, and, depending on subspecies, the black areas of the bill are replaced with dusky or the bill is entirely yellowish.

The Emerald Toucanet is a generally common in humid forest and woodland, mainly at higher elevations. The 3–4 white eggs are laid in an unlined hole in a tree, usually an old woodpeckernest, but sometimes a natural cavity. Both sexes incubate the eggs for 14–15 days, and the chicks remain in the nest after hatching. They are blind and naked at birth, and have short bills and specialised pads on their heels to protect them from the rough floor of the nest. They are fed by both parents, and fledge after about 6 weeks. They are fed for several weeks after leaving the nest.

Small flocks, usually consisting of 5–10 birds, move through the forest in “follow-my-leader” style with a direct and rapid flight. This species is primarily an arboreal fruit-eater, but will also take insects, lizards, bird eggs, and other small prey.

The calls of the Emerald Toucanet are a loud dry rrip rrip rrip rrip rrip and a graval graval graval. It has been suggested that the two different calls are given by the two sexes. There are also croaking alarm and aggression calls.

Southern Double-collared Sunbird or Lesser Double-collared Sunbird (Cinnyris chalybeus)

by birdinfo • May 7, 2014 • 0 Comments

The Southern Double-collared Sunbird or Lesser Double-collared Sunbird (Cinnyris chalybeus) (formerly placed in the genus Nectarinia), is a small passerine bird which breeds in southern South Africa. It is mainly resident, but partially migratory in the north-east of its range.

This sunbird is common in gardens, fynbos, forests and coastal scrub. The Southern Double-collared Sunbird breeds from April to December, depending on region. The closed oval nest is constructed from grass, lichen and other plant material, bound together with spider webs. It has a side entrance which sometimes has a porch, and is lined with wool, plant down and feathers.

The Southern Double-collared Sunbird is 12 cm long. The adult male has a glossy, metallic green head, throat upper breast and back. It has a brilliant red band across the chest, separated from the green breast by a narrow metallic blue band. The rest of the underparts are whitish. When displaying, yellow feather tufts can be seen on the shoulders. As with other sunbirds the bill is long and decurved. The bill, legs and feet are black. The eye is dark brown. The male can be distinguished from the similar Greater Double-collared Sunbird by its smaller size, narrower red chest band and shorter bill.

The female Southern Double-collared Sunbird has brown upperparts and yellowish-grey underparts. The juvenile resembles the female. The female is greyer below than the female Orange-breasted Sunbird, and darker below than the female Dusky Sunbird.

The Southern Double-collared Sunbird is usually seen singly or in small groups. Its flight is fast and direct on short wings. It lives mainly on nectar from flowers, but takes some fruit, and, especially when feeding young, insects and spiders. It can take nectar by hovering like a hummingbird, but usually perches to feed most of the time.

The call is a hard chee-chee, and the song is high pitched jumble of tinkling notes, rising and falling in pitch and tempo for 3–5 seconds or more.

Palawan Peacock-Pheasant (Polyplectron napoleonis)

by birdinfo • May 6, 2014 • 0 Comments

The Palawan Peacock-Pheasant (Polyplectron napoleonis) is a medium-sized (up to 50 cm long) bird in the family Phasianidae.

The adult male is the most peacock-like member of the genus Polyplectron in appearance. It has an erectile crest and highly iridescent electric blue-violet, metallic green-turquoise dorsal plumage. It breast and ventral regions are dark black. The retrices are wide, flat, and rigid. Their terminal edges are squared. Each tail plume and upper-tail covert is marked with highly iridescent, light reflective, ocelli. The tail is erected and expanded laterally together with the bodies of the birds. The male also raise one wing and lower the other, laterally compressing the body during pair-bonding, courtship displays as well and may also be antipredator adaptation.

The female is slightly smaller than the male. Its contour plumage is cloudy silt in colouration. The mantle and breast are a dark sepia in coloration. The retrices are essentially similar to those of the male, exhibiting marked adumbrations and stunning ocelli. Throughout, their plumage is earthen and difficult to distinguish from the substrate and branches. While it has similar proportions of the tail to the male, its markings are not as visually arresting. Like the male, the female has a short crest and is whitish on the throat, cheeks and eyebrows.

Chicks are vivid ginger and cinnamon hued with prominent yellow markings. Juveniles of both sexes in the first year closely resemble their mothers. Subadult males in their second year more closely resemble their fathers but the mantle and wing coverts are marked with adumbrations analogous with the ocelli in the contour plumage of other peacock-pheasant species.

Like other peacock-pheasants, Palawan males and some females exhibit multiple spurs on the metatarsus. These are used in anti-predator defense, foraging in leaf litter and contests with other males. The male Palawan excavates slight depressions in which it orients its body during postural display behaviors. The bird vibrates loudly via stridulation of retrice quills. This communicative signal is both audible and as a form of seismic communication.

Palawan Peacock-Pheasants are strong fliers. Their flight is swift, direct and sustained.

The Palawan Peacock-Pheasant, with its unique male plumage and distant range, represents a basal (Early? Pliocene, c.5-4 mya)[3] offshoot of the genus Polyplectron (Kimball et al. 2001). The species is widely accepted to be monotypic, but while some males have white supercillia, giving a “double-barred” or masked appearance, others lack this trait, exhibiting dark faces, taller, denser crests and prominent white cheek spots. The birds with white supercillia are sometimes classified as a distinct subspecies, nehrkornae. The white-cheeked form may inhabit deep forest habitat with low ambient light in rolling terrain whilst the masked form appears to inhabit taller, more open forest on flatter terrain with higher ambient light. This masked form exhibits an abbreviated, more tightly compacted and highly iridescent crest. Females of the two respective forms exhibit analogous differentiation. The female of the masked form is more prominently patterned and densely crested with paler contour plumage.

Peacock-pheasants are highly invertivorous, taking isopods, earwigs, insect larvae, mollusks, centipedes and termites as well as small frogs, drupes, seeds and berries.

They are strictly monogamous, renesting yearly. The female usually lays up to two eggs. Both parents rearing chicks for up to two years. Males act as sentinels of nest sites and are highly pugnacious during the reproductive cycle.

Due to ongoing habitat loss, small population size and limited range as well as hunting and capture for trade, the Palawan Peacock-Pheasant is classified as Vulnerable in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. It is listed on Appendix I of CITES.

Chestnut-breasted Mannikin (Lonchura castaneothorax)

by birdinfo • May 3, 2014 • 0 Comments

Chestnut-breasted Mannikin (Lonchura castaneothorax) also known as the Chestnut-breasted Munia or Bully Bird (in Australia), is a small brown-backed munia with a black face and greyish crown and nape. It has a broad ferruginous breast bar above a white belly. The species is found in Australia, New Caledonia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. This species is also introduced to French Polynesia and France.

In Australia, the Chestnut-breasted Mannikin is known as a bird of reed beds and rank grasses bordering rivers, in swamp, in grassy country, and mangroves. It is commonly found in cane fields and cereal crops. In dry seasons, it is seen in arid country but always near water. It is also found in grassy woodland. (Slater et al. 1986)

In New Guinea, the Chestnut-breasted Mannikin is a bird of drier areas and does not usually seen in jungle roads and clearings where other munias such as Grey-headed Mannikin are found.

In French Polynesia, it is well established as an introduced species, and its habits have developed somewhaat differently, indicating the adaptability of the species. It is widespread on the bracken-covered hill slopes, in pastures and gardens (it is not a garden bird in Australia), on cultivated land and wasteland, in forest ecotones and coconut plantations (Lever 1989)

In Australia, during the breeding season Chestnut-breasted Muniais mostly seen in pairs, but in late autumn and winter months it congregates in large flocks, at times eating seeds of cereal crops.

Chestnut-breasted Mannikin is a highly sociable species, flocking in large number outside the breeding season. Breeding birds will join groups or flocks when foraging.

It has a distinct liking for Barley seed and thus the local people give it a name, Barley Bird. (Cayley 1932) The species is also fond of paspalum grass Paspalum longifolium, bullrush millet Pennisetum typhoides and Sorghum species. It is also been recorded that it feeds on feral millet Pannicum maximum and wild sugar cane Saccharum robustum in Papua New Guinea. (Bapista 1990)

Tawny-capped Euphonia (Euphonia anneae)

by birdinfo • April 25, 2014 • 0 Comments

The Tawny-capped Euphonia (Euphonia anneae) is a species of bird in the Fringillidae family. It is found in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests, subtropical or tropical moist montane forests, and heavily degraded former forest.

Tawny-capped Euphonias mostly feed on various tree-borne fruits. In particular, they are known to feed on mistletoe berries. Their gut is specially adapted for mistletoe berries, which are poisonous.

These finches tend to move to places where mistletoe berries are the most abundant. They are most commonly seen in small groups foraging in their favored feeding areas.

Euphonias are known for their almost constant singing. Their best known calls sound like “Pe-we,” “see-see,” and “beem-beem”.

Tricolored Heron (Egretta tricolor)

by birdinfo • April 4, 2014 • 0 Comments

The Tricolored Heron (Egretta tricolor) formerly known in North America as the Louisiana Heron, is a small heron. It is a resident breeder from the Gulf states of the USA and northern Mexico south through Central America and theCaribbean to central Brazil and Peru. There is some post-breeding dispersal to well north of the nesting range.

Tricolored Heron’s breeding habitat is sub-tropical swamps. It nests in colonies, often with other herons, usually on platforms of sticks in trees or shrubs. In each clutch, 3–7 eggs are typically laid.

This species measures from 56 to 76 cm (22 to 30 in) long, and has a wingspan of 96 cm (38 in). The slightly larger male heron weighs 415 g (14.6 oz) on average, while the female averages 334 g (11.8 oz). It is a medium-large, long-legged, long-necked heron with a long pointed yellowish or greyish bill with a black tip. The legs and feet are dark.

Adults have a blue-grey head, neck, back and upperwings, with a white line along the neck. The belly is white. In breeding plumage, they have long blue filamentous plumes on the head and neck, and buff ones on the back.

Tricolored Heron stalks its prey in shallow or deeper water, often running as it does so. It eats fish, crustaceans, reptiles, and insects.

Purplish-mantled Tanager (Iridosornis porphyrocephalus)

by birdinfo • April 4, 2014 • 0 Comments

The Purplish-mantled Tanager (Iridosornis porphyrocephalus) is a species of bird in the Thraupidae family. It is found in Colombia and Ecuador. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist montane forests and heavily degraded former forest. It is threatened by habitat loss.

Inhabiting mossy forest and second-growth woodland, the Purplish-mantled Tanager is a fairly social species that can be found in pairs, mixed species flocks, or individually. With its rich purplish-blue back and contrasting yellow throat, this species is unlikely to be confused with any other tanagers within its range. Traveling individually, in pairs, or small family groups, this species forages mainly on insects; however, there have been observations of these species eating berries as well. Due to this species’ small range, unknown population status, and threats of habitat loss and conversion for cattle-grazing, the Purplish-mantled Tanager has been listed as near threatened on IUCN’s Watchlist.

Booted Racket-tail (Ocreatus underwoodii)

by birdinfo • April 3, 2014 • 0 Comments

The Booted Racket-tail (Ocreatus underwoodii) is a species of hummingbird. It is found in the Andean cordillera of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. A population also occurs on the Venezuelan coast. This is the only species in the monotypic genus Ocreatus.

The upperparts are a golden green colour and the rump has a white bar. The throat and breast are a brilliant emerald green. The legs are feathered down to the feet with horny white short feathers. The tail is brownish black and deeply forked. The tail feathers on either side increase in length from the centre and the outermost ones are exceptionally long and have bare shafts tipped by oval plumes, which gives the species its common name.

Bluethroat (Luscinia svecica)

by birdinfo • April 3, 2014 • 0 Comments

The Bluethroat (Luscinia svecica) is a small passerine bird that was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family Turdidae, but is now more generally considered to be an Old World flycatcher, Muscicapidae. It, and similar small European species, are often called chats.

It is a migratory insectivorous species breeding in wet birch wood or bushy swamp in Europe and Asia with a foothold in western Alaska. It nests in tussocks or low in dense bushes. It winters in north Africa and the Indian Subcontinent.

The Bluethroat is similar in size to the European Robin at 13–14 cm. It is plain brown above except for the distinctive black tail with red side patches. It has a strong white supercilium. The male has an iridescent blue bib edged below with successive black, white and rust coloured borders. Some races, such as L. svecica svecica (Red-spotted Bluethroat) of northern Eurasia, have a red spot in the centre of the blue bib.

Others, such as L. svecica cyanecula (White-spotted Bluethroat) of southern and central Europe, have a white spot in the centre of the blue bib. L. svecica magna in Turkey has no central spot.

Females of all races usually have just a blackish crescent on an otherwise cream throat and breast. Newly fledged juveniles are freckled and spotted dark brown above.

Despite the distinctive appearance of the males, recent genetic studies show only limited variation between the forms, and confirm that this is a single species.

The male has a varied and very imitative song. Its call is a typical chat “chack” noise.

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