Verreaux's Coua

Coua verreauxi

Long-tailed, tree-dwelling bird with gray upperparts and pale underparts. Bare facial skin is purple and blue. Inquisitive, restless bird that bounces through the trees, often in thick and spiny vegetation. Found locally in southwestern spiny forest at low elevation. Most frequent call is a very dry rasp. Similar to Crested Coua, but unlike the southwestern Crested Coua, has white rather than brick-red undertail. Verreaux’s Coua can also be distinguished by the black tip to its longer and messier crest, and by the lack of orange on the chest. 

识别特征

Verreaux's coua (Coua verreauxi) is a species of cuckoo in the family Cuculidae. It is endemic to Madagascar. According to a BBC documentary, it is found only near a salt lake in the southern part of the island. The lake is 16 km long but only a couple of metres deep. The area has been drying out for the last 40,000 years and the organisms living here have become adapted to conserve water. The bird's name commemorates French ornithologist and collector Jules Verreaux. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical dry shrubland. The birds are found in southern part of the spiny forest zone. They live in coastal euphorbia scrub, and are most active at dawn and dusk. Birders listen for its descending series of loud contact calls, "corick-corick-corick-corick". A sympatric species is the crested coua, C. cristata.

分类信息

Genus: Coua; Family: Cuculidae; Order: Cuculiformes.

学名
Coua verreauxi
命名信息
Grandidier, A, 1867
Cuculiformes
Cuculidae
Coua

分布与栖息地

Verreaux's coua is endemic to the southwestern tip of Madagascar within the spiny forest zone. Its typical habitat is thick scrub on coral rag but it also occurs in other habitat types including within degraded areas.

迁徙
Resident species

行为

Migration pattern: Resident species.

保护状况

Population trend: declining.

种群趋势
declining

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分布

鸟叫声

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