Pygmy sultans
| Pygmy sultans | ||||||||||
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Dwarf sultana ( Porphyrio martinicus ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||
| Porphyrio martinicus | ||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1766) |
The pygmy sultan ( Porphyrio martinicus , syn .: Porphyrula martinica ) is a common railing bird native to America .
features
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The 33 cm long pygmy sultan's chicken resembles the pond rail in appearance and behavior. However, it is the far more conspicuous bird with its ultramarine-blue plumage with green back, green wings and white under tail-coverts, red beak with yellow tip, blue forehead shield and long yellow legs. The young bird is brown in color and has claws on its wings that allow it to climb in the bushes, but which disappear with age and which is a rare but very interesting reference to the dinosaur ancestry of today's birds. Otherwise these claws can only be found in hoatzin chicks . The pygmy sultans are not a skilled flyer, but they usually flutter up when suddenly disturbed. It lets your legs dangle over short flight distances.
Occurrence
The dwarf sultans grouse occurs in the southeast of the USA , in Central America , in South America as far as Argentina , in places around the Mediterranean Sea and rarely in Great Britain and parts of Africa . It inhabits lakes , lagoons , swamps and marshes with dense vegetation. Only the northernmost populations move south after the breeding season.
behavior
When looking for food, the bird wades around in the shallow water between the aquatic plants, it runs over lily pad leaves and climbs in the branches of overhanging bushes. He usually stays under cover. The pygmy sultans feed on aquatic plants, seeds, berries, invertebrates and amphibians. However, it has also been observed that it eats eggs or young of other bird species.
Reproduction
From spring to autumn, the pygmy sultans hen lays 3 to 12 white eggs with brown spots in a bowl-shaped nest in the reeds or between floating plants, which are incubated for three weeks. Non-breeding birds sometimes help with nest building and care for the young birds.
literature
- Robert Burton and Maurice Burton: The New International Wildlife Encyclopedia . Heinemann Library, Milwaukee 1980, pp. 919-920, ISBN 0839361785 .
- Kenn Kaufman: Lives of North American Birds. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 2001 ISBN 0618159886 .
Web links
- Videos, photos and sound recordings for Porphyrio martinica in the Internet Bird Collection
- Porphyrio martinicus inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved January 30, 2014.