Carola's Parotia
Parotia carolae
A fairly large, short-tailed bird of mid-montane forest canopy. Male is mainly black with white flanks, golden throat, bronzy-scaled chest, white stripe down the forehead and 6 antennalike feathers projecting from the back of the head. Note the yellow eye. Female is gray-brown above and strongly-barred below with a heavy white stripe above the eye. Male dances at a terrestrial court, where it gives one of the most elaborate displays in the bird world. Co-occurs with Lawes’s Parotia but Carola’s male has white flanks and female lacks a black head. One of many different vocalizations is a loud, quavering shriek.
Taxonomy
- Scientific name
- Parotia carolae
- Authority
- Meyer, AB, 1894
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Paradisaeidae
- Genus
- Parotia
Range and habitat
- Migration
- Resident species
Conservation
- Population trend
- stable
Photos
Distribution
Other Birds
Uniform Crake
Amaurolimnas concolor
Larger than most crakes. Found in wet forests instead of marshes. Very difficult to see as it creeps through dense understory. Far more easily heard: a series of upslurred whistled notes. Look for a brown bird with richer rufous underparts, a dull greenish-yellowish bill, and reddish legs. Favors dense wet forest or thickets, often but not always near a swamp or stream.
Cape Shoveler
Spatula smithii
A large, elongated, speckled, brown duck with a distinctive and extended spatula-shaped black bill. In flight the sky-blue forewing is distinctive; no other regularly occurring duck species shares this feature. Male has a gray head, yellow eye, and yellow-orange feet; female has a rusty-brown head, dark eye, and gray-yellow feet. Within its range, the Northern Shoveler is an extremely rare vagrant, and it differs from Cape Shoveller by the following features: male in breeding plumage has a green head and chestnut belly; female and juvenile are in general paler and more warmly colored, but some individuals may be inseparable from female Cape Shoveller.
Ayacucho Thistletail
Asthenes ayacuchensis
Poorly known thistletail found only in a small area of the high Andes east of the city of Ayacucho in southern Peru. It is brown above, gray below, with a long wispy tail and a reddish-orange chin patch. It has a darker chin patch than Vilcabamba Thistletail and Puna Thistletail, and is not known to overlap with either species. It inhabits scrub and stunted forest near treeline. Song is a rapid, high-pitched trill.
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