The wood hoopoes or scimitarbills are a small

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

n family, Phoeniculidae, of near passerine

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

s. They live south of the

Sahara Desert The Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the list of deserts by area, third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Ar ...

and are not migratory. While the family is now restricted to

Sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the list of sovereign states and ...

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

evidence shows that it once had a larger distribution. Fossils attributed to this family have been found in

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

rocks in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. The wood hoopoes are related to the

kingfisher Kingfishers are a family, the Alcedinidae, of small to medium-sized, brightly coloured birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species living in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Oceania, ...

s, the rollers, and the

hoopoe Hoopoes () are colourful birds found across Africa, Asia, and Europe, notable for their distinctive "Crest (feathers), crown" of feathers which can be raised or lowered at will. Two living and one extinct species are recognized, though for many y ...

, forming a

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

with this last according to Hackett ''et al.'' (2008). A close relationship between the hoopoe and the wood hoopoes is also supported by the shared and unique nature of their

stapes The ''stapes'' or stirrup is a bone in the middle ear of humans and other tetrapods which is involved in the conduction of sound vibrations to the inner ear. This bone is connected to the oval window by its annular ligament, which allows the f ...

. The wood hoopoes most resemble the true hoopoes with their long down-curved bills and short rounded wings. According to genetic studies, the two genera, '' Phoeniculus'' and '' Rhinopomastus'', appear to have diverged about ten million years ago, so some systematists treat them as separate subfamilies or even separate

families Family (from ) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictability, structure, and safety as ...

Description

The wood hoopoes are a morphologically distinct group, unlikely to be mistaken for any other. These

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

are medium-sized ( long, much of which is the tail). They have metallic

plumage Plumage () is a layer of feathers that covers a bird and the pattern, colour, and arrangement of those feathers. The pattern and colours of plumage differ between species and subspecies and may vary with age classes. Within species, there can b ...

, often blue, green or purple, and lack a crest. The sexes are similar in all but two species, the forest wood hoopoe and the common scimitarbill. Their bills are either red or black, although young red-billed species also have black bills and bill colour is correlated with age. The legs are scarlet or black, short, with thick tarsi. They climb tree trunks in the manner of a woodpecker, and when feeding on the ground they hop rather than walking like the true

. Their tails are long and strongly graduated (the central feathers are the longest), and marked conspicuously with white, as are their wings.

Range and behaviour

These are birds of open woodland, savannah, or thornbrush, and are mainly arboreal. They require large trees both for feeding on as well as to provide hollows for nesting and nocturnal roosting. Two species are found exclusively in rainforest, the forest wood hoopoe and the white-headed wood hoopoe. All the other species are found in more open woodland and bush. They feed on arthropods, especially insects, which they find by probing with their bills in rotten wood and in crevices in bark. They nest in unlined tree holes, laying two to four eggs, which are blue, grey, or olive, and unmarked in most species. Hoopoes hunt for prey primarily on the ground as they use their tongue-like

beak The beak, bill, or rostrum is an external anatomical structure found mostly in birds, but also in turtles, non-avian dinosaurs and a few mammals. A beak is used for pecking, grasping, and holding (in probing for food, eating, manipulating and ...

s to pick up insects on the soil or grass. The Hoopoe's tongue occupy 2/3 length of the beak.

Species

There are eight species. Family: Phoeniculidae

References

External links

Wood hoopoe videos
on The Cornell Lab of Ornithology - Macaulay Library {{Taxonbar, from=Q752529 * Birds of Sub-Saharan Africa Taxa named by Charles Lucien Bonaparte