Senegal Coucal
By Charlie • September 14, 2008 • 6 commentsSenegal Coucal Centropus senegalensis
Abuja, Nigeria. July 2008
Coucals are large members of the cuckoo family, with eleven representatives in Africa. The Senegal Coucal Centropus senegalensis ranges right across Africa from the Gambia to northern Sudan, with a separate population spread over a wide area of southern Africa. It’s a bird of grassy habitats with trees, such as bush and savannah (occupying a similar niche to eg Asia’s Lesser Coucal). Sexes are similar, but juveniles are duller and barred above.
The Senegal Coucal takes a wide range of insects, caterpillars and small vertebrates. It occasionally eats other food items.
Most coucals have loud, booming calls, and the Senegal Coucal is no different, advertising its presence with a loud ‘ook-ook-ook’ call that sometimes sounds like someone blowing across the top of a bottle.
Photographs copyright Charlie Moores
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That second photo is particularly interesting and different from the others
Great images of a really spectacular bird! Is it mantling prey, anting, sunning?
Are red pterins more common in Old World birds than in New World birds? Many New World water birds have red irides, but it seems more rare in other orders, in New World at least.
Maybe it is a false impression . . .
http://forum.pbase.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=32839&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&sid=5ffe1b5fe04869a5245765e22ef1ccfc
Rick: Ha, I wondered exactly the same thing. I didn’t label the image because I couldn’t be sure precisely, but I don’t think it was mantling prey (I watched it for a while and it wasn’t looking at anything underneath it). I thought at the time it was probably anting (the parkland was full of tiny black ants) but when I checked the spot the bird was sitting in I couldn’t see the frenzy of ants that you usually find when a bird has been anting. In the end I thought perhaps it was sunning. The grass was damp (there had been a ton of rain overnight) and I’d seen one or the same coucal hunting in long grass earlier - perhaps it was just drying off?
Sara: that’s a very interesting question (I’ve no idea what a pterin is by the way). I’ve never thought about it before which perhaps shows how widespread the feature is over here. Red eyes certainly occur in many Old World families, let alone orders: for example there are red-eyed weavers, orioles, cisticolas, starlings, and plenty of cuckoos. One of the most alarmingly red-eyed Old World birds I can think of offhand, incidentally, is the male Asian Koel Eudynamys scolopacea - a large coal-black cuckoo with startlingly red eyes that look almost ‘devil-like’…
Male Asian Koel, Bangalore, Nov 2007
Pterins are just some organic cyclic molecules. They were first observed in butterfly wing pigments (and named appropriately), and they are present in irides of owls and many other birds, apparently.
Thank you for sharing the photo, but in that one, he appears rather more cute and curious than devilish!