The bar-bellied cuckooshrike (''Coracina striata'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

in the family Campephagidae. It is found in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and its natural

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

s include mangrove forest, dry forest, swamp forest, and secondary forest. The plumage varies among the subspecies, with different amounts of barring on the underparts. The

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

(IUCN) has assessed the species as one of least-concern.

Taxonomy

The bar-bellied cuckooshrike was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1775 in his '' Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux''. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the ''Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle'' which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist

Pieter Boddaert Pieter Boddaert (1730 – 6 May 1795) was a Dutch physician and natural history, naturalist. Early life, family and education Boddaert was the son of a Middelburg jurist and poet by the same name (1694–1760). The younger Pieter obtained his M.D ...

coined the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Corvus striatus'' in his catalogue of the ''Planches Enluminées''. Buffon believed that his specimen had come from New Guinea but the species does not occur there; the type locality has been designated as the island of

Luzon Luzon (; ) is the largest and most populous island in the Philippines. Located in the northern portion of the Philippines archipelago, it is the economic and political center of the nation, being home to the country's capital city, Manila, as ...

in the Philippines. The bar-bellied cuckooshrike is now placed in the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

Coracina ''Coracina'' is a large genus of birds in the cuckooshrike family Campephagidae. The genus was introduced by the French ornithologist Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot in 1816. The type species was subsequently designated as the white-bellied cuckoosh ...

'' that was introduced by the French ornithologist Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot in 1816. The generic name ''Coracina'' is from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

meaning "little raven", a diminutive of '' meaning "raven". The specific epithet ''striata'' is from the Latin ''striatus'' meaning "striated". It was variously placed in the genera '' Graucalus'' and '' Artamides'' until ''Coracina'' was widely accepted around the early 1940s. The

IOC World Bird List ''Birds of the World: Recommended English Names'' is a paperback book, written by Frank Gill and Minturn Wright on behalf of the International Ornithologists' Union. The book is an attempt to produce a standardized set of English names for all b ...

recognises fourteen extant subspecies: ''Coracina striata sumatrensis'', ''C. s. simalurensis'', ''C. s. babiensis'', ''C. s. kannegieteri'', ''C. s. enganensis'', ''C. s. bungurensis'', ''C. s. vordemani'', ''C. s. difficilis'', ''C. s. striata'', ''C. s. mindorensis'', ''C. s. panayensis'', ''C. s. boholensis'', ''C. s. kochii'' and ''C. s. guillemardi''. ''C. s. cebuensis'', formerly found on

Cebu Cebu (; ceb, Sugbo), officially the Province of Cebu ( ceb, Lalawigan sa Sugbo; tl, Lalawigan ng Cebu; hil, Kapuroan sang Sugbo), is a province of the Philippines located in the Central Visayas region, and consists of a main island and 167 ...

, is extinct. The

Andaman cuckooshrike The Andaman cuckooshrike (''Coracina dobsoni'') is a species of bird in the family Campephagidae. It is endemic to the Andaman Islands. It was formerly considered a subspecies of the bar-bellied cuckooshrike. References *Rasmussen, P.C., and J ...

(''Coracina dobsoni'') is sometimes considered a subspecies. The ''

Handbook of the Birds of the World The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. T ...

'' considers ''panayensis'' to be a separate species.

Description

The bar-bellied cuckooshrike is long. The plumage and size are variable. In the Philippines, the subspecies ''guillemardi'' and ''mindorensis'' are uniformly grey, with some black on the male's head; in ''striata'', ''cebuensis'', and ''difficilis'', the male has faint barring on the rump, and the female's belly is barred black and white; in ''panayensis'', the male also has black and white bars on the belly, and the female has additional barred patches on the breast; in ''kochii'', the male's breast is also barred, and the female's underparts are entirely barred. In ''C. s. sumatrensis'' of the Thai-Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo, the male has grey upperparts with some barring on the rump and lower-tail coverts, and the female's underparts are barred up to the lower breast. The

juvenile Juvenile may refer to: *Juvenile status, or minor (law), prior to adulthood *Juvenile (organism) *Juvenile (rapper) (born 1975), American rapper * ''Juvenile'' (2000 film), Japanese film * ''Juvenile'' (2017 film) *Juvenile (greyhounds), a greyho ...

bird has grey upperparts and entirely barred underparts in ''panayensis'' and ''kochii''; in ''sumatrensis'', the juvenile has brown, white, and black upperparts, and the underparts are white with black bars.

Distribution and habitat

This cuckooshrike is found in the

Thai-Malay Peninsula The Malay Peninsula (Malay: ''Semenanjung Tanah Melayu'') is a peninsula in Mainland Southeast Asia. The landmass runs approximately north–south, and at its terminus, it is the southernmost point of the Asian continental mainland. The area ...

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and eas ...

, the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

, and many small islands in the area, such as the

Kangean Islands The Kangean Islands or simply Kangean (Indonesian language, Indonesian: ''Kepulauan Kangean'') is a collective name referred to the area of Kangean Island, Kangean (the main island) and its surrounding islands lie in the north of Bali Isla ...

and Natuna Islands. It became locally extinct in Singapore around the late 1960s. It lives at low elevations, its habitats being back-

mangrove forest Mangrove forests, also called mangrove swamps, mangrove thickets or mangals, are productive wetlands that occur in coastal intertidal zones. Mangrove forests grow mainly at tropical and subtropical latitudes because mangroves cannot withstand fr ...

, dry forest, freshwater swamp forest,

secondary forest A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. ...

, and sometimes

scrubs Scrub(s) may refer to: * Scrub, low shrub and grass characteristic of scrubland * Scrubs (clothing), worn by medical staff * ''Scrubs'' (TV series), an American television program * Scrubs (occupation), also called "scrub tech," "scrub nurse," o ...

and plantations.

Behaviour

This cuckooshrike usually lives in small groups or in

mixed-species foraging flock A mixed-species feeding flock, also termed a mixed-species foraging flock, mixed hunting party or informally bird wave, is a flock of usually insectivorous birds of different species that join each other and move together while foraging. These ar ...

s with other cuckooshrikes. It mainly eats insects, including

caterpillar Caterpillars ( ) are the larval stage of members of the order Lepidoptera (the insect order comprising butterflies and moths). As with most common names, the application of the word is arbitrary, since the larvae of sawflies (suborder Sym ...

s, mantises, and dragonflies, and also feeds on

figs The fig is the edible fruit of ''Ficus carica'', a species of small tree in the flowering plant family Moraceae. Native to the Mediterranean and western Asia, it has been cultivated since ancient times and is now widely grown throughout the world ...

. Vocalisations include a harsh ', a whistling ', ', ' and a whinnying '. Breeding has been reported in April and May. The cup nest is built on the fork of a tree and is made of mosses, lichens, leaves, rootlets, and possibly mud. The eggs are grey, marked lavender, and reddish brown.

Status

This species has a large range. Its global population appears to be decreasing because of

habitat destruction Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby ...

, but not rapidly, so the IUCN Red List has assessed it as a least-concern species. In the Thai-Malay Peninsula, it is considered to be vulnerable.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1589130

bar-bellied cuckooshrike The bar-bellied cuckooshrike (''Coracina striata'') is a species of bird in the family Campephagidae. It is found in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and its natural habitats include mangrove forest, dry forest, swamp forest, ...

Birds of Malesia

Taxonomy articles created by Polbot