Horned Screamer
Anhima cornuta
Enormous, ungainly ogre of a bird. Found around freshwater marshes and rivers in Amazonian lowlands. Dark gray and black overall with a scaly white neck and white belly. Named for the characteristic unicorn-like appendage on top of its head. Walks along river banks and perches in waterside vegetation, sometimes quite high. Honking song can be heard at great distances—a deep, reedy “ha-moo-co” often uttered in duet.
识别特征
The horned screamer is a massive 84–95 cm (33–37.5 in) long, 3.5 kg (7.7 lb) bird, with a small chicken-like bill. The upperparts, head, and breast are black, with white speckles on the crown, throat and wing coverts. There is a long spiny structure projecting forward from the crown. This structure is unique among birds and is not derived from a feather but is a cornified structure that is loosely attached to the skull and grows continuously while often breaking at its tip. This gives this species its name. It has very long and lanky legs and three large toes in each. The belly and under wing coverts are white. It has two sharp spurs on its wings and feet which are only partially webbed.
分类信息
Already known in the 17th century, the horned screamer was described in 1766 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae. He introduced the binomial name Palamedea cornuta. The horned screamer is now the only species placed in the genus Anhima that was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. The specific epithet cornuta is the Latin word for "horned". The German naturalist Georg Marcgrave had used the Latin name Anhima in 1648 for the horned screamer in his Historia naturalis Brasiliae. The name was from the word for the bird in the Tupi language of South America.
- 学名
- Anhima cornuta
- 命名信息
- (Linnaeus, 1766)
- 目
- Anseriformes
- 科
- Anhimidae
- 属
- Anhima
分布与栖息地
The horned screamer is found in lowlands from Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, French Guiana, Suriname, and Guyana. It has been possibly extirpated from Trinidad. Despite having declined locally, it remains widespread and is fairly common overall. Its range in Brazil appears to have expanded in recent years.
- 迁徙
- Resident species
行为
Screamers, like most birds, tend to group together, but are for the most part semi-social. The existence of the screamer is rather sedentary. It lives in well-vegetated marshes and feeds on water plants.
保护状况
- 种群趋势
- declining
照片
分布
鸟叫声
其他鸟类
Fire-breasted Flowerpecker
Dicaeum ignipectus
Tiny songbird of mountain and hill forests; ranges from the Himalayas south to the Malay Peninsula on the Asian mainland, with an isolated population in Taiwan’s highlands. Adult male is dark blue above and pale creamy white below, with a black stripe leading down the belly from a brilliantly red patch like a bloodstain on the breast. Female is much plainer, brownish-olive above and off-white below; lacks the bright white throat of Plain and female Scarlet-backed Flowerpeckers. Often forages at flowers blooming in the canopy. Gives a high, thin, up-and-down “tsee’ip, tsee’ip, tsee’ip” and a rising series of ticks (often ending with more metallic notes); calls include dry tick notes and high, thin “tseet”s.
Lesser Wagtail-Tyrant
Stigmatura napensis
Small, slender, and long-tailed bird found only on islands along major rivers in the Amazon basin. Distinctive in its specialized habitat with yellow underparts and eyebrow, and conspicuous white patches in its wings and tail. Typically found in pairs, which are often hard to see as they skulk in dense, grassy thickets. Vocalizations include rich, inflected whistles and energetic, rattled churrs, often given as a duet. Birds from northeastern Brazil are now considered a different species, Bahia Wagtail-Tyrant.
Lita Woodpecker
Piculus litae
Scarce, yellow-faced woodpecker of lowland and foothill rainforest in western Colombia and northwestern Ecuador. Both sexes have olive upperparts, strongly barred or scaled underparts, and red wing patch. Male has red crown and mustache stripe; female has little or no red on head. No overlap with the similar White-throated Woodpecker. Forages at middle to upper levels of the forest, sometimes with mixed-species flocks. Call is a harsh scream.
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