Bar-bellied Cuckooshrike

Identificazione

The bar-bellied cuckooshrike is 24–32 centimetres (9.4–12.6 in) long. The plumage and size are variable. In the Philippines, the subspecies guillemardi and mindorensis are uniformly grey, with some black on the male's head; in striata, cebuensis, and difficilis, the male has faint barring on the rump, and the female's belly is barred black and white; in panayensis, the male also has black and white bars on the belly, and the female has additional barred patches on the breast; in kochii, the male's breast is also barred, and the female's underparts are entirely barred. In C. s. sumatrensis of the Thai-Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo, the male has grey upperparts with some barring on the rump and lower-tail coverts, and the female's underparts are barred up to the lower breast. The juvenile bird has grey upperparts and entirely barred underparts in panayensis and kochii; in sumatrensis, the juvenile has brown, white, and black upperparts, and the underparts are white with black bars.

Tassonomia

The bar-bellied cuckooshrike was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1775 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Corvus striatus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. Buffon believed that his specimen had come from New Guinea but the species does not occur there; the type locality has been designated as the island of Luzon in the Philippines. The bar-bellied cuckooshrike is now placed in the genus Coracina that was introduced by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1816. The generic name Coracina is from the Ancient Greek korakinos meaning "little raven", a diminutive of korax meaning "raven". The specific epithet striata is from the Latin striatus meaning "striated".<p>It was variously placed in the genera Graucalus and Artamides until Coracina was widely accepted around the early 1940s. The IOC World Bird List recognises fourteen extant subspecies: Coracina striata sumatrensis, C. s. simalurensis, C. s. babiensis, C. s. kannegieteri, C. s. enganensis, C. s. bungurensis, C. s. vordemani, C. s. difficilis, C. s. striata, C. s. mindorensis, C. s. panayensis, C. s. boholensis, C. s. kochii and C. s. guillemardi. C. s. cebuensis, formerly found on Cebu, is extinct. The Andaman cuckooshrike (Coracina dobsoni) is sometimes considered a subspecies. The Handbook of the Birds of the World considers panayensis to be a separate species.

Nome scientifico

Coracina striata

Autorità

(Boddaert, 1783)

Ordine

Passeriformi

Famiglia

Campephagidae

Genere

Coracina

Areale e habitat

This cuckooshrike is found in the Thai-Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, the Philippines, and many small islands in the area, such as the Kangean Islands and Natuna Islands. It became locally extinct in Singapore around the late 1960s. It lives at low elevations, its habitats being back-mangrove forest, dry forest, freshwater swamp forest, secondary forest, and sometimes scrubs and plantations.

Migrazione

Specie stanziale

Comportamento

Comportamento migratorio: Specie stanziale.

Conservazione

Tendenza della popolazione: in diminuzione.

Tendenza della popolazione

in diminuzione