Scimitarbills (also spelt scimitar-bills) are three species of African

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

belonging to the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

''Rhinopomastus''. They are often classified in the

woodhoopoe The wood hoopoes or scimitarbills are a small African family, Phoeniculidae, of near passerine birds. They live south of the Sahara Desert and are not migratory. While the family is now restricted to Sub-Saharan Africa, fossil evidence shows th ...

family, Phoeniculidae; however, genetic studies show that they diverged from the true woodhoopoes about 10 million years ago and so they are sometimes placed in a family of their own, the Rhinopomastidae. They are smaller than most woodhoopoes and their bills are strongly curved like a

scimitar A scimitar ( or ) is a single-edged sword with a convex curved blade associated with Middle Eastern, South Asian, or North African cultures. A European term, ''scimitar'' does not refer to one specific sword type, but an assortment of different ...

, giving them their name. They are mostly glossy black in colour with a few white markings on the wings. While other woodhoopoes are gregarious birds which gather in flocks, the scimitarbills are usually seen alone or in pairs. They feed mainly on

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

s and other

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

s, which they find by using their bills to probe into holes and crevices. They are acrobatic birds, well-adapted for clambering through trees. The eggs are laid in a tree cavity.

Species

References

* Christopher Perrins, ''ed.'' (2004) ''The New Encyclopedia of Birds'', Oxford University Press, Oxford * Ian Sinclair & Peter Ryan (2003) ''Birds of Africa south of the Sahara'', Struik, Cape Town {{Taxonbar, from=Q763271 Phoeniculidae