Javan Leafbird
Chloropsis cochinchinensis
Medium-sized, leaf-green inhabitant of lowland, foothill, and lower montane forests on Java. Male a triangular black throat patch with a deep blue center, as well as a pale yellow patch on the breast. Female is green all over with a small blue throat smudge. Both sexes have vivid blue highlights on the wings, which help to distinguish it from Greater Green Leafbird, which has plain green wings, as well as a pale yellow throat and eyering on females. Vocalizations varied, including a rather slow, simple song consisting of whistles and warbles, as well as shorter warbled series somewhat reminiscent of bulbul vocalizations.
Taxonomy
The Javan leafbird was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the thrushes in the genus Turdus and coined the binomial name Turdus cochinchinensis. Gmelin based his account on "Le verdin de la Cochinchine" that had been described in 1775 by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in his multi-volume work Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. A hand-coloured engraving by François-Nicolas Martinet was published separately to accompany Buffon's text. Cochinchina is a historical name for Vietnam. The Javan leafbird is now one of 12 leafbirds placed in the genus Chloropsis that was introduced in 1827 by William Jardine & Prideaux Selby. It was formerly considered to be conspecific with the blue-winged leafbird (Chloropsis moluccensis).
- Scientific name
- Chloropsis cochinchinensis
- Authority
- (Gmelin, JF, 1789)
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Chloropseidae
- Genus
- Chloropsis
Range and habitat
- Migration
- Resident species
Conservation
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
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