Kinabaluelster
| Kinabaluelster | ||||||||||||
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Kinabaluelster ( Cissa jefferyi ), |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Cissa Jefferyi | ||||||||||||
| Sharpe , 1885 |
The Bornean Green Magpie ( Cissa jefferyi ) is a songbird art from the family of corvids (Corvidae). With a body length of around 27–38 cm and a weight of 125 g, it is a rather small and short-tailed representative of the green star ( Cissa ). Like all species of its genus , it has emerald green plumage and a black face mask. The distribution area of Cissa Jefferyi is limited to the north of Borneo , where it inhabits the forests of the mountain and hill country. The birds feed mainly on invertebrates, which they prey in small flocks on the forest floor and in the branches. The food is supplemented by small vertebrates. The breeding season of the species is likely in February.
The type was set up in 1888 by Richard Bowdler Sharpe . Since the 1930s she has been taken in a common species with the Javanese bushelster as Cissa thalassina jefferyi . Since 2011 it has been put in its own way due to differences in the sound utterances and morphology . The Kinabaluelster is probably more closely related to the Jagdelster ( Cissa chinensis ) than to the Bushelster. The existence of the species has not been researched. As it lives away from human settlement areas and in nature reserves, it is currently not considered endangered.
features
Build and color
The Kinabaluelster is a small raven with a strong beak and rather short legs. It has a body length of 27–38 cm and weighs around 125 g. This corresponds to the size of the bushelster ( C. thalassina ) and is somewhat smaller than the remaining species of the genus Cissa . There is no sexual dimorphism between males and females . The wings of the species reach a length of 130-136 mm. Their tail is 118–129 mm long and therefore proportionally shorter than that of the hunting or gold-bellied elster ( C. hypoleuca ), but clearly longer than that of the bush elster. The beak of the Kinabaluelster measures 32–37 mm in length and 11–14 mm in height. Your barrel bone is 38–42 mm long.
In its plumage drawing, the Kinabaluelster shows the basic pattern typical of Grünelstern: the head and body plumage as well as the wing covers and the top of the control feathers are apple green. The longer they are exposed to sunlight, the more they fade into bluish tones. A black face mask stretches from the reins down to the neck, which frames the eyes of the birds. Since the animal's head of feathers does not cover the neck, the mask appears, unlike the bushelster, to be continuous. The inner flags and tips of the umbrella feathers are greenish white and form a light edge in the folded wing. Their inner flags, on the other hand, are reddish chestnut brown, as are the outer arm wings and the hand wings . The tail feathers of the Kinabaluelster show distinct dark subterminal bands and white feather tips on the underside . They can only be seen in the abdomen or with the tail spread apart. The legs, beak and wax skin of the birds are light red to orange-red. Her iris is white and has a fine pink inner edge.
Flight image and locomotion
The Kinabaluelster usually moves in low undergrowth or on the ground. They mostly fly low above the ground and rarely over open terrain, which distinguishes them from the sympatric hunting magpie, among other things . Compared to her, they are characterized by a shorter tail, especially in flight.
Vocalizations
As with all corvids, the vocalizations of the Kinabaluelster are complex and varied, but differ significantly from those of their congeners. Compared to other Grünelstern, their calls hardly contain any harmonics , which is why they sound more melodious and less croaky to the human ear. In addition, it uses higher sound frequencies than other species. Acoustically it is similar to the hunting magpie, but not as strong as the bushelster. Their vocalizations are whistling and whispering and resemble those of smaller songbirds. Fast series of whistles are typical of the Kinabaluelster, in which three to five increasingly lighter and higher monosyllabic calls are followed by a lower and differently accented syllable. Such call sequences consist of swie or pie , which also form the basis for shorter and simpler vocalizations. The swie can also be heard as a thin, elongated swiiiiie or alternating with a throaty grg .
distribution
The Kinabaluelster mainly inhabits the mountainous interior of northern Borneo . It is a resident bird and stays in its breeding area all year round. Their distribution area is distributed over the states of Malaysia , Brunei and Indonesia . The northernmost point of the species area is roughly marked by Mount Kinabalu . From there, its border runs southwest roughly parallel to the coast, but there are gaps in the distribution in places. In the south-west it extends to Mount Murud and to the Usan-Apau plateau further south - east. Its southeast border is marked in the south by Mount Dulit , from where it runs north-northeast again parallel to the coast to the extreme north of the island. The Artareal essentially covers the highlands of Borneo and does not penetrate anywhere to the coast. What exactly it is limited by has not been researched. It largely coincides with the distribution of the hunting magpie subspecies C. chinensis minor , which occurs almost exclusively in the lowlands and whose habitat does not overlap with that of the Kinabaluelster except on Mount Kinabalu. The total size of the species area is estimated at 131,000 km².
habitat
The typical habitat of the species are mountain rainforests , in places they also advance into the hill country. They live in altitudes between 305 and 2735 m, but occur predominantly between 950 and 2500 m. The Kinabaluelster mainly uses the ground and the undergrowth, but is also often found in the crown area of the trees, while avoiding open areas. It is likely to be displaced by the hunting magpie from the flat and hilly areas and habitats away from the forests. The upper habitat limit is usually the tree line .
Way of life
nutrition
Nudibranchs are an important part of the diet of the Kinabaluelster. In addition, the birds often eat insects and their larvae, such as caterpillars up to 10 cm in length or light-affine insects that they catch around lamps at dawn. Individual observations also speak of small snakes, lizards and possibly frogs as prey. Many pieces of food are picked up on the ground on mossy, rotten tree stumps or under leaves. However, this could also be a picture distorted by the possibilities of observation; Analyzes of the stomach contents are not available.
Social and territorial behavior
The Kinabaluelster usually moves in pairs or in small groups, which are probably a breeding pair with this year's offspring.
Reproduction and breeding
Little is known about the breeding biology of the Kinabaluelster. Observations of freshly flown out young in April suggest that the breeding season is in February. Nests or eggs have not yet been described.
Systematics and history of development
The first description of the Kinabaluelster comes from Richard Bowdler Sharpe and dates to the year 1888. Sharp described the species together with a few others on the basis of bellows that John Whitehead had collected on Mount. The hunting magpie subspecies C. chinensis minor was already known at that time; Whitehead and Sharpe delimited the birds described for the first time on the basis of the light wing edges from them. At his request, Sharpe named the species in honor of Whitead's father Jeffery Cissa jefferyi . The system of the Grünelstern was subsequently subjected to numerous changes. Jean Delacour recognized six species in 1929, including C. jefferyi , Frederick Nutter Chasen and Nagamichi Kuroda a few years later only one polytypic species Chissa chinensis . Charles Vaurie (1970) and Burt Monroe and Charles Sibley (1990) recognized only the hunting magpie and the bush magpie (including C. jefferyi and C. hypoleuca ) as valid species. Most influential, however, was Derek Goodwin's taxonomy , which distinguished between the widespread hunting magpie, the Indochinese gold-bellied magpie ( C. hypoleuca ) and a bush magpie, the latter uniting the highland forms of Borneo and Java. Most of the standard works followed in the next few decades, only Hans Edmund Wolters reported doubts that the widely separated populations of Java and Borneo were the same species. That changed with two revisions of the genus by Edward C. Dickinson and colleagues (2004) and a group around Bas van Balen (2011). Dickinson and his co-authors questioned Goodwin's boundaries, which van Balen took as an opportunity to compare the vocalizations and morphometry of both forms. They came to the conclusion that the Javanese bushelster must be more closely related to the hunting magpie, as both showed clear overlaps in the call spectrum. On the other hand, C. thalassina and C. jefferyi showed little in common and also differed in the plumage and the color of the iris. On this basis they separated the two forms and placed them in their own types; BirdLife International soon followed this view.
Inventory and status
No figures are available for the population of the species. However, it is known that it occurs in various protected areas and is considered a relatively common bird in the north Bornean highlands. The Kinabaluelster is therefore - unlike the Buschelster on Java - classified by van Balen and colleagues as well as by BirdLife International as not endangered.
swell
literature
- Sebastianus van Balen, James A. Eaton , Frank E. Rheindt : Biology, Taxonomy and Conservation Status of the Short-tailed Green Magpie Cissa [t.] Thalassina from Java . In: Bird Conservation International . 2011, p. 1-19 , doi : 10.1017 / S0959270911000360 .
- Edward Clive Dickinson, Siegfried Eck, Jochen Martens: Systematic Notes on Asian Birds. 44. A Preliminary Review of the Corvidae . In: Zoologische Verhandelingen Leiden . tape 350 , 2004, pp. 85-109 .
- R. Bowdler Sharpe: Further Descriptions of new Species of Birds discovered by Mr. John Whitehead on the Mount of Kina Balu, Northern Borneo . In: Ibis . tape 30 , no. 4 , 1888, p. 383-396 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1474-919X.1888.tb08495.x .
- Frederick H. Sheldon, Robert G. Moyle, John Kennard: Ornithology of Sabah: History, Gazetteer, Annotated Checklist, and Bibliography . In: Ornithological Monographs . tape 52 , 2001, p. 1-281 .
Web links
- J. Taylor: Bornean Green Magpie Cissa Chinensis. BirdLife International , www.birdlife.org, 2012.
- Cissa jefferyi inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved October 19, 2013.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Sharpe 1888, pp. 383-385.
- ↑ van Balen et al. 2011, p. 7.
- ↑ a b c d e del Hoyo et al. 2009, p. 598.
- ↑ van Balen et al. 2011, p. 8.
- ↑ Sheldon et al. 2001, pp. 267-268.
- ↑ a b Madge & Burn 1994, p. 110.
- ↑ Dickinson et al. 2004, p. 90.
- ↑ a b van Balen et al. 2011, p. 11.
- ↑ a b c Taylor 2012. Retrieved December 17, 2012.
- ↑ Sheldon et al. 2001, p. 268.
- ↑ van Balen et al. 2011, p. 2.
- ↑ a b van Balen et al. 2011, p. 16.