Mouse birds
| Mouse birds | ||||||||||
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Blue-necked mouse bird ( Urocolius macrourus ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the order | ||||||||||
| Coliiformes | ||||||||||
| Murie , 1872 | ||||||||||
| Scientific name of the family | ||||||||||
| Coliidae | ||||||||||
| Swainson , 1837 |
The mouse birds (Coliidae) are the only family in the order of the mouse birds (Coliiformes). There are two genera and six species in this family. They owe their name, analogous to the mice , their sociable way of life and the way they move, like scurrying through the bushes like a mouse. They also have an almost fur-like gray or brownish plumage. They mainly eat berries and fruits and only come to the ground in exceptional cases.
features
Mouse birds reach a body length of 29 to 38 centimeters. Despite this overall length, they are rather small birds, because around 3/5 of the body length is accounted for by the tail.
There are turning toes on her feet: the first and fourth toes can be turned both forward and backward. This is an adaptation to the shimmy in the branches and allows them to move skillfully in the thick foliage of trees. With their strong, sharp claws they can hang upside down on the branches. When they rest together, they crowd close together and warm each other. Similar to the hummingbirds , mouse birds can fall into a night-time frozen sleep . In this energy-saving sleep, body temperature and metabolism are greatly reduced.
They have long, stiff tail feathers, a soft, dense, gray to brown plumage and a hood . Due to their dense plumage, they can move quickly and easily through a thorn bush without risk. Their short, powerful beaks are curved downwards. The different species hardly differ in their body color and body shape. Males and females are alike. They mainly feed on berries and fruits.
Reproduction
They create their bowl-shaped nests in the trees or bushes. A clutch consists of two to four (sometimes up to six) brown-speckled white to cream-colored eggs. The incubation period is between eleven and 13 days.
Distribution area
Mouse birds are small, graceful birds and occur exclusively in Africa , south of the Sahara . They inhabit bushland, savannahs, forests and forest edges, parks and orchards in cities including Sudan , Somalia , Ethiopia and Nigeria . The sociable birds can sometimes be found in groups of twenty to thirty animals.
Fossils
The mouse birds are a very old group of birds, the fossils of which can be dated back 43 to 49 million years. There are also fossil finds from the Messel pit near Darmstadt . Alphonse Milne-Edwards first described the Miocene taxon Colius palustris as a passerine bird, but the German paleontologist Peter Ballmann classified this bird in the mouse bird family in 1969.
Genera and species
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The following species and genera belong to the mouse birds:
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Colius
- Brown-winged mouse bird ( Colius striatus )
- Red-backed mouse bird ( Colius castanotus )
- Bald mouse bird ( Colius leucocephalus )
- White-backed mouse bird ( Colius colius )
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Urocolius
- Blue-necked mouse bird ( Urocolius macrourus )
- Red rein mousebird ( Urocolius indicus )
literature
- Joseph Michael Forshaw (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Birds , 1999. ISBN 3-8289-1557-4 .
- Theo Pagel , Bernd Marcordes: Exotic soft-eaters . Eugen Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-8001-5192-9 .
- Herbert Schifter : Die Mausvögel , April 2005. ISBN 3-89432-816-9 (reprint from 1972)
