African Pitta

Identificazione

The sexes are alike. The crown, face, and ear coverts are solid black, and the throat is pale salmon pink. The broad eyebrow is buff to brownish buff. The flanks, breast, and side of the neck are a mustard yellow, washed olive on the upper breast. Some western birds have the breast very greenish. The wing coverts are deep green and tipped turquoise blue, or black and tipped turquoise and royal blue. The mantle and back are green, and the rump and upper tail coverts pale turquoise blue. The wings are rounded, and the primaries are black with pale and white tips. The bases of the central primaries form a white square, conspicuous in flight or display. The belly and undertail coverts are crimson red, and the legs are pink. Immature birds have a duller plumage with a buffy-pink vent and fawn-coloured throat.

Tassonomia

The African pitta was described by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1816 and given the binomial name Pitta angolensis. Vieillot had introduced the genus Pitta in another book published in the same year.<p>Three subspecies are recognised:<p>The closely related green-breasted pitta (Pitta reichenowi) replaces the African pitta in the interior of Africa's tropical rainforests. Together the two species form part of a wide-ranging Old World superspecies, which in relatively recent times colonised Africa from the east.<p>It has been suggested that the races pulih and angolensis may be conspecific with the green-breasted pitta. The migratory race longipennis may also be a separate species.

Nome scientifico

Pitta angolensis

Autorità

Vieillot, 1816

Ordine

Passeriformi

Famiglia

Pittidae

Genere

Pitta

Areale e habitat

The African pitta is a migratory species to southeastern Africa and the Congo Basin. Its breeding habitat in southeastern Africa is deciduous, lowland riparian forest or thicket with intermittent dense understorey and small sub-canopy glades. On migration however, they may sojourn at any areas of bush or woodland. Fallen dead trees and open branches are favoured perches when performing their peculiar bouncing display. They are more numerous in undisturbed vegetation, and the opening up of the riparian woodland by elephants may reduce their habitat.<p>The race P. a. longipennis spends the austral winter in the western Ugandan forests as far north as Budongo, and coastal Kenya as far north as Gedi ruins. A bird found at Minziro Forest in northwestern Tanzania was in heavy moult, suggestive that the area is on the southeastern fringe of the non-breeding range.<p>They arrive in southern Africa from late October, though mainly in November and early December. They seldom breed north of the Rukwa Valley and Rufiji River in Tanzania, and no further south than central Mozambique. They depart again in February, though occasionally as late as April. Ringing studies in the Pugu hills and Mufindi have confirmed the timing of northwestward migration. Exhausted and perished birds are regularly found during migration, especially November to December and April to June. Southward migrating birds sometimes overshoot when they follow moist tropical fronts (at night), which may account for their vagrancy in the north-eastern Transvaal and the Zimbabwean plateau. Some reverse migration has been noted after the breeding season.

Migrazione

Migratori completi

Comportamento

Comportamento migratorio: Migratori completi.

Conservazione

Tendenza della popolazione: in diminuzione.

Tendenza della popolazione

in diminuzione