Ant picker
| Ant picker | ||||||||||||
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Red-fronted ant picker ( Parmoptila rubrifrons ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Parmoptila | ||||||||||||
| Cassin , 1859 |
The ant pickers ( Parmoptila ) are a genus of birds belonging to the finch family . The three types of ant pickers are native to West and Central Africa.
description
The ant pickers reach a body length of 11 to 12.5 centimeters, they weigh 8 to 10.5 grams.
John Cassin described the Woodhouse ant picker ( Parmoptila woodhousei ) from Gabon in 1859 and established a separate genus ( Parmoptila ) for it. In this species, males and females have very similar plumage. The top of the body is brown with slightly lighter shaft lines. The wing top feathers are lined with reddish brown. The underside of the body is whitish and covered with dense olive-gray spots. The head and neck are slightly reddish, the forehead feathers of the males have crimson-red, otherwise pale brown tips shortly after moulting, which are missing in the females.
In 1872, Sharpe and Ussher described a new species from Ghana for the first time, which the authors initially placed in the genus Pholidornis as Pholidornis rubrifrons . In this species, now known as the red-forehead ant picker ( Parmoptila rubrifrons ), males and females differ significantly from one another. The underside of the body of the females is whitish and thickly covered with dark spots, the underside of the males is maroon. The upper side of the body is gray-olive in both sexes. The male has white spots on the side of the head, which are also distributed over the neck and throat. The red band on the forehead of the males is striking.
There is a possibility of confusion between the red-forehead ant picker and the Congo ant picker ( Parmoptila jamesoni ), which comes from the former Belgian Congo and was also classified in the genus Pholidornis when Shelley first described it in 1890 . The males of the Congo ant picker also have a red spot on their foreheads. This meant that they were mostly put in the same way with the red-forehead ant picker. It was not until the end of the 20th century that the females of the Congo ant picker were also observed, which, in contrast to the females of the red-forehead ant picker, have a striped underside of the body. The males of the Congo ant picker lack the light spots on the head and neck, and the basic color of their head is reddish-brown like their chest and underside of the body, and not gray-olive like the males of the red-forehead ant picker.
distribution
The distribution area of the ant pickers extends from West Africa through Central Africa with foothills to East Africa.
The type locality is the Camma River in Gabon , from where the first described specimen of the Woodhouse ant picker comes. The entire occurrence of this species extends from southeast Nigeria via Cameroon and Gabon to the southwest of the Central African Republic and to the west of the Republic of the Congo . The subspecies Parmoptila woodhousei ansorgei occurs in the north-west of Angola to the south of this area .
The range of the Congo ant picker connects to the east. It is mainly located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo , formerly Zaire . Eastern extensions of the occurrence reach the Central African Rift in western Uganda and the nature reserve Minziro Forest Reserve in the extreme northwest of Tanzania . Sympatric occurrences with the Woodhouse ant picker are not known, they could only be found in the border area of the distribution zones in Central Africa and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Due to external similarities, the red-forehead ant picker was put together with the Congo ant picker in a common species for a long time, but it only occurs in West Africa. Its strongly fragmented distribution area extends from southern Mali , over Sierra Leone , Liberia , Guinea and the Ivory Coast to Ghana .
Habitat and way of life
Basically, ant pickers are shy and inconspicuous birds that often elude close observation. Accordingly, little is known about their behavior. In the second half of the 20th century they were generally considered a single species and the differences in their way of life were neglected.
Antpickers mainly inhabit lowland forests, dense and older secondary forests, swamp forests and gallery forests. They are primarily in the undergrowth. They occur individually, in pairs or in small family groups.
The ant pickers are food specialists . As their common German name suggests, they mainly hunt tree ants , but also other small insects . They also break up ant nests under the bark of trees and systematically look for insects on branches and leaves. In contrast to the other fine finch species, they are difficult to keep because of their high demands for heat and food .
The nests are 30 to 40 centimeters wide and around 20 centimeters high. They are built from grass and leaves in the branches of trees 2.5 to 3.5 meters above the ground. The breeding behavior is strongly dependent on the climate of the distribution area, in the best case a brood can be raised twice a year. The clutch usually consists of three to four eggs of white color.
Danger
The populations of the red-forehead antpicker occurring in the west of the distribution area of the genus are disappearing, the habitat of this species has already been greatly reduced and fragmented by clearing the woody plants. The IUCN therefore classifies the species as 
(= Near Threatened - potentially endangered). The other two species have a relatively large, contiguous range. The populations appear to be stable, although accurate counts are lacking. The Woodhouse ant picker and the Congo ant picker are therefore classified as 
(= Least Concern - not endangered). But they are very rare in their entire range.
Systematics and taxonomy
The first descriptor , John Cassin , chose the name of the genus in 1859 because of the shield-shaped feathers on the birds' throats and named it Parmoptilon , after the " Parma ", the light shield of the Roman troops, and the ancient Greek word "ptilon" ( Greek πτίλον ) for down feather. The specific epithet of the nominotypical species Parmoptila woodhousei honors Cassin's friend, the American doctor and naturalist Samuel Washington Woodhouse (1821-1904), who was known at the time of the first description , who devoted himself to exploring the Colorado River .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Martin W. Woodcock: Systematics and confusion in the genus Parmoptila. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, 123, 4, pp. 274-277, 2003
- ↑ BirdLife factsheet on the Woodhouse ant picker , accessed on October 29, 2014
- ↑ a b Jürgen Nicolai (Hrsg.), Joachim Steinbacher (Hrsg.), Renate van den Elzen, Gerhard Hofmann, Claudia Mettke-Hofmann: Prachtfinken - Afrika , series Handbuch der Vogelpflege, Eugen Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 2007, p. 29– 30 ISBN 978-3-8001-4964-3
- ↑ BirdLife factsheet on the Congo ant picker , accessed on October 29, 2014
- ↑ Parmoptila woodhousei in the Internet Bird Collection (with photo), accessed October 29, 2014
- ↑ BirdLife factsheet on the red-forehead ant picker , accessed on October 29, 2014
- ^ A b C. Hilary Fry and Stuart Keith (eds.): The Birds of Africa - Volume VII. , Christopher Helm, London 2004, pp. 262-263 ISBN 0-7136-6531-9
- ↑ Parmoptila rubrifrons in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2014.2. Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved October 29, 2014.
- ↑ Parmoptila woodhousei in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2014.2. Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved October 29, 2014.
- ↑ Parmoptila jamesoni in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2014.2. Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved October 29, 2014.
- ↑ John Cassin : Catalog of birds collected on the Rivers Camma and Ogobai, Western Africa, by Mr. PB Duchaillu in 1856, with notes and descriptions of new species. Proceedings of the Academy of Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 11, pages 30-55, 1859 pages 40-41 (first description of the genus)
literature
- C. Hilary Fry and Stuart Keith (Eds.): The Birds of Africa. Volume VII. Christopher Helm, London 2004, ISBN 0-7136-6531-9 , p. 262.
- Jürgen Nicolai (Hrsg.), Joachim Steinbacher (Hrsg.), Renate van den Elzen, Gerhard Hofmann, Claudia Mettke-Hofmann: Prachtfinken - Afrika , Series Handbuch der Vogelpflege, Eugen Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 2007 ISBN 978-3-8001-4964 -3
- Martin W. Woodcock: Systematics and confusion in the genus Parmoptila. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, 123, 4, pp. 274-277, 2003
- John Cassin: Catalog of birds collected on the Rivers Camma and Ogobai, Western Africa, by Mr. PB Duchaillu in 1856, with notes and descriptions of new species. Proceedings of the Academy of Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 11, pages 30-55, 1859, pages 40-41 (first description of the genus)
