The southern nutcracker (''Nucifraga hemispila'') is a

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped') which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines generally have an anisodactyl arrangement of their ...

bird in the crow family

Corvidae Corvidae is a Cosmopolitan distribution, cosmopolitan Family (biology), family of Songbird, oscine passerine birds that contains the crows, ravens, Rook (bird), rooks, magpies, jackdaws, jays, treepies, choughs, and Nutcracker (bird), nutcrackers ...

. It was formerly considered to be

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organism ...

with the northern nutcracker (''Nucifraga caryocatactes'') and the Kashmir nutcracker (''Nucifraga multipunctata'') under the English name "spotted nutcracker".

Taxonomy

The southern nutcracker was formally described in 1831 by the Irish zoologist Nicholas Vigors under 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 ...

''Nucifraga hemispila''. He specified the type locality as just "the Himalayas"; however, research into Vigors' travels has been able to restrict the locality to the

Shimla Shimla, also known as Simla ( the official name until 1972), is the capital and the largest city of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. In 1864, Shimla was declared the summer capital of British India. After independence, the city ...

and

Almora Almora ( Kumaoni: ') is a municipal corporation and a cantonment town in the state of Uttarakhand, India. It is the administrative headquarters of Almora district. Almora is located on a ridge at the southern edge of the Kumaon Hills of the ...

districts of northern India. The genus name ''Nucifraga'' is the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

name given to the northern nutcracker by the English naturalist William Turner in 1544, as a translation of the German name ''Nussbrecher'' meaning "nut-breaker". The specific epithet ''hemispila'' combines the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

ἡμι-/''hēmi-'' meaning "half-" or "small" with σπιλος/''spilos'' meaning "stain" or "spot". The southern nutcracker was formerly considered to be

with the spotted nutcracker (''Nucifraga caryocatactes''), that now renamed in its revised narrower ciscumscription as northern nutcracker. It is here treated as a separate species based on differences in morphology and vocalisation, as well molecular genetic analysis. Four subspecies are accepted: * ''N. h. hemispila'' Vigors, 1831 – northwest, central Himalayas * ''N. h. macella'' Thayer &

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, 1909 – east Himalayas to central and southern China and northern Myanmar * ''N. h. interdicta'' Kleinschmidt & Weigold, 1922 – northern China * ''N. h. owstoni'' Ingram, C, 1910 – Taiwan

Description

The southern nutcracker is similar in size to the northern nutcracker, about 33 cm long. It is largely brown, with limited white spotting on the face and upper breast, plain brown lower breast and back, unmarked black wings, and white lower belly and under-tail coverts; for comparison, both the northern nutcracker and the kashmir nutcracker have extensive and larger white spots on the entire breast and back. The tail is black with white outer corners. The bill is stout and black, the legs also black.

Ecology and behaviour

It occurs primarily in

pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. ''World Flora Online'' accepts 134 species-rank taxa (119 species and 15 nothospecies) of pines as cu ...

forests, with particular preference for

Chinese white pine ''Pinus armandii'', the Armand pine or Chinese white pine, is a species of pine native to China, occurring from southern Shanxi west to southern Gansu and south to Yunnan, with outlying populations in Anhui. It grows at altitudes of 2200–3000 ...

(''Pinus armandii''),

blue pine ''Pinus wallichiana'' is a pinophyta, coniferous evergreen tree native to the Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains, from eastern Afghanistan east across northern Pakistan and north west India to Yunnan in southwest China. It grows in mou ...

(''Pinus wallichiana''), and other related white pines in ''Pinus'' subgenus ''Strobus'', the seeds of which it caches and distributes in a manner similar to other nutcrackers; it will also use other conifers such as

spruce A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' ( ), a genus of about 40 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal ecosystem, boreal (taiga) regions of the Northern hemisphere. ''Picea'' ...

in the event of cone crop failure in its preferred species.

References

{{Taxonbar , from=Q31874513, from2=Q27622995 Southern nutcracker Birds of Eurasia Southern nutcracker Southern nutcracker