Giant Coua
Coua gigas
Huge, long-tailed, long-legged bird. Rufous belly and blue-and-pink bare facial skin. Found locally in dry deciduous forest, gallery forest, and spiny forest at low and middle elevations in west and southwest Madagascar. Usually found walking along the forest floor, but will ascend to thick spots in the canopy and mid-story, especially when calling. Sometimes shy, but sometimes much more approachable than typical couas. Most common vocalization is a loud “kwaaa” followed by several lower “ku” notes. Very similar to Coquerel’s Coua, but much larger, with pink facial skin. Similar to Red-capped Coua, but much larger, with a rufous belly.
识别特征
Giant couas are approximately 62 cm (24 in) in length (nearly double the size of Coua coquereli) and have a blue patch around their eyes, characteristic of the coua genus and similar to African turacos. As a member of the cuckoo family, they have a reversible third toe and resemble coucals in their method of scrambling through entangled vines for food. Observations indicate that they can climb 10 metres high from the ground.<p>Coua gigas subsist on seeds (Capurodendron madagascariensis and Buxus madagascariensis), insects and some small vertebrates such as chameleons (Furcifer sp.). This species of bird is often encountered in large unlogged gallery forests that lack dense shrub layers, which provides greater mobility and implies a preference for undisturbed forest with tall trees. Studies indicate that in logged forests, giant couas usually glean during dry seasons and more often leap and sally during rainy seasons. In contrast, they have been found to do the opposite in forested areas (more often glean during rainy seasons and more often probe during dry seasons), which suggests the significant role that environment plays in foraging behaviour. Giant coua tend to utilise microhabitats in logged forests with a greater canopy cover, and forage in logged gallery forests with higher canopies than other areas while avoiding sites with more stems and obstacles .
分类信息
The giant coua was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 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 Cuculus gigas in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The giant coua is now placed in the genus Coua that was erected by the Swiss naturalist Heinrich Rudolf Schinz in 1821. The generic name is from koa, the Malagasy word for the couas. The specific epithet gigas is the Latin word for "giant". The species is monotypic.
- 学名
- Coua gigas
- 命名信息
- (Boddaert, 1783)
- 目
- Cuculiformes
- 科
- Cuculidae
- 属
- Coua
分布与栖息地
Coua gigas is found in the lowlands of western and southern Madagascar up to 700 metres(Sibley 2007). The range of this bird species is considered large with an estimated global extent of occurrence of 50,000-100,000 km2. Global population size has not been quantified but is believed to be large since it is described as 'common' in at least parts of its range. Similarly, global population trends are not available, and even though it is believed that the species is not approaching the population decline thresholds for the criterion of the IUCN Red List (i.e. declining more than 30% in ten years or three generations), there is evidence for population decline. This summarizes the reasons for evaluating giant coua as least concern by the official Red List Authority for birds for IUCN.
- 迁徙
- Resident species
行为
Migration pattern: Resident species.
保护状况
Population trend: declining.
- 种群趋势
- declining
照片
分布
鸟叫声
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