The African piculet (''Verreauxia africana''), sometimes placed in the genus ''
Sasia'', is a species of bird in the family
Picidae. It is the only species placed in the genus ''Verreauxia''.
It is found in Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Liberia, and Uganda. This species is described as locally common and has a very large range, so the
International Union for Conservation of Nature
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the stat ...
has rated its conservation status as being of "
least concern
A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wil ...
".
[
]
Taxonomy
The African piculet was formally described in 1855 by the French naturalists Jules
Jules is the French form of the Latin "Julius" (e.g. Jules César, the French name for Julius Caesar).
In the anglosphere, it is also used for females although it is still a predominantly masculine name.One of the few notable examples of a femal ...
and Édouard Verreaux
Jean Baptiste Édouard Verreaux (16 September 1810 – 14 March 1868) was a French naturalist, taxidermist, collector, and dealer. Botanist and ornithologist Jules Verreaux was his older brother.
Career
In 1830, Verreaux travelled to South A ...
from a specimen collected in Gabon, West Africa. They placed it in the genus '' Sasia'' and coined the binomial name
In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, altho ...
''Sasia africana''. The African piculet is now the only species placed in the genus ''Verreauxia'' that was introduced in 1856 by the German ornithologist Gustav Hartlaub
Karel Johan Gustav Hartlaub (8 November 1814 – 29 November 1900) was a German physician and ornithologist.
Hartlaub was born in Bremen, and studied at Bonn and Berlin before graduating in medicine at Göttingen. In 1840, he began to study and ...
. The species is monotypic
In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unisp ...
: no subspecies
In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...
are recognised.[
]
Description
The African piculet is a small bird some long. The male has a chestnut or reddish forehead and a greyish-green or olive-green crown whereas the forehead in the female is the same colour as the crown. The rest of the upper parts are rather dark green tinged with yellow. The wings and tail are brownish-black. The throat and breast are darkish grey and the belly is a slightly paler grey. The beak is black, the eye red and the legs reddish. The juvenile is similar to the adult but has grey or buffy tones mixed into the general hue of the plumage.
Ecology
The habitat of the African piculet is mainly lowland secondary forest. It is an active bird often seen flitting from place to place in pairs or threesomes, and sometimes joining mixed species flocks. It forages through the lower storeys of trees, bushes and dense vegetation. It is a relative of the woodpecker, and despite its small size, hammers its beak into branches and splits stems to get at beetle larvae. It also gleans other insects but seems uninterested in ants. Breeding has been observed between June and February in various parts of its range. The nest is built within of the ground and the clutch size is usually two. Both parents are involved in raising the young.[
]
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q28123873, from2=Q1266812
Sasia
Birds of Africa
Birds of Central Africa
Birds described in 1855
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot