Crossley's vanga

Crossley's vanga (Mystacornis crossleyi), also known as Crossley's babbler-vanga, Crossley's babbler, Madagascar groundhunter, or Madagascar groundjumper, is a bird species in the family Vangidae.

Crossley's vanga

Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Vangidae
Genus: Mystacornis
Sharpe, 1870
Species:
M. crossleyi
Binomial name
Mystacornis crossleyi
(Grandidier, 1870)

Taxonomy

The bird is in the monotypic genus Mystacornis. The species is an example of convergent evolution: its bill and body shape adapted to its habit of looking for insect prey in the leaf litter, eventually becoming so similar to that of ground-babblers that early naturalists initially classified the Crossley's vanga into what was then known as the babbler family, Timaliidae.

Description
Details of morphology

Crossley's vanga is a small babbler-like bird, 15 cm long and weighing around 25 g. Its most distinctive feature is the olive-grey bill, which is disproportionately long and slightly hooked at the end. The plumage of the male is olive green on the crown, back, wings, tail and flanks, a grey belly, black throat and face, with a white submoustachial stripe and grey stripe above the eye. The legs are grey and the iris black. The female is similar but with a white throat and belly.

Behaviour

Breeding

The breeding season for this species is from August to November. The male builds a shallow cup nest of twigs and rootlets in a tree or other vegetation around 1.5 m off the ground. Two to three eggs are laid and incubated by both sexes.

Feeding

It forages singly or in pairs. It is a terrestrial bird that feeds on the ground on spiders, cockroaches, earwigs, true bugs, grasshoppers and ants. It rarely flies but instead walks and runs and probing its bill into leaf-litter, mosses, and soil.

Distribution and habitat

Crossley's vanga is endemic to Madagascar. It is distributed in the east of Madagascar in broadleaf forest, from sea level up to 1800 m.

gollark: No, it sounds like you would just *set* a price arbitrarily.
gollark: In actual markets, the price is created by the interaction of buy/sell orders though.
gollark: If all the dividends are the same, then the actual value is going to also be the same.
gollark: The stock market is hard because you don't know the dividends a given thing will pay.
gollark: Then the optimal strategy would probably be quite obvious?

References
  1. BirdLife International. 2016. Mystacornis crossleyi. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T22716772A94510337. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22716772A94510337.en. Downloaded on 31 July 2018.
  • Collar, N. J. & Robson, C. 2007. Family Timaliidae (Babblers) pp. 70–291 in; del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. & Christie, D.A. eds. Handbook of the Birds of the World, Vol. 12. Picathartes to Tits and Chickadees. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.