The blue-eared barbet (''Psilopogon cyanotis'') is a barbet in the

Megalaimidae The Asian barbets are a family of bird species, the Megalaimidae, comprising two genera with 35 species native to the forests of the Indomalayan realm from Tibet to Indonesia. They were once clubbed with all barbets in the family Capitonidae bu ...

family native to mainland Southeast Asia. Because of its wide distribution and stable population it is listed as

Least Concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

on the

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...

Description

The blue-eared barbet has green plumage and crimson-coloured spots on the cheeks. Its throat and ear-coverts are verditer-blue. A black band runs between throat and breast. It is long. It is a plump bird, with a short neck, large head and short tail. The bill is dark. The adult male has a black forehead. The female has a duller head pattern with a more orange tint to the patches above and below the ear coverts, and the juvenile has a green head with some blue on the ear coverts and throat. The male's territorial call is a repeated loud . Other calls include a whistled .

Distribution and habitat

The blue-eared barbet is a resident breeder in the hills from eastern

Nepal Nepal (; ne, :ne:नेपाल, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in S ...

through northeast

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

to southern

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

and

Indochina Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west an ...

. It inhabits shrublands and forests up to an altitude of . It nests in a tree hole.

Taxonomy

''Bucco cyanotis'' was the scientific name proposed by Edward Blyth in 1847 who described a barbet from the

Arakan Arakan ( or ) is a historic coastal region in Southeast Asia. Its borders faced the Bay of Bengal to its west, the Indian subcontinent to its north and Burma proper to its east. The Arakan Mountains isolated the region and made it accessi ...

area. In the 19th and 20th centuries, about 19 generic names were proposed for Asian barbet species, including ''Psilopogon'' by

Salomon Müller Salomon Müller (7 April 1804 – 29 December 1864) was a German naturalist. He was born in Heidelberg, and died in Freiburg im Breisgau. Müller was the son of a saddler in Heidelberg. Along with Heinrich Boie and Heinrich Christian Macklot, he w ...

in 1836, ''Megalaima'' by

George Robert Gray George Robert Gray FRS (8 July 1808 – 6 May 1872) was an English zoologist and author, and head of the ornithological section of the British Museum, now the Natural History Museum, in London for forty-one years. He was the younger brother ...

in 1849 and ''Mezobucco'' by George Ernest Shelley in 1889. Taxonomists used different generic names when describing barbets in collections of

natural history museums A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more ...

. ''Mesobucco duvaugli orientalis'' was proposed by

Herbert C. Robinson Herbert Christopher Robinson (4 November 1874 – 20 May 1929) was a British zoologist and ornithologist. He is principally known for conceiving and initiating the major ornithological reference '' The Birds of the Malay Peninsula''. Robinson ...

in 1915 for seven barbets collected on the coast at the Thailand-Cambodian border and on Ko Chang Island that differed from ''cyanotis'' barbets; they were larger and paler, and the red spot below their eyes was intermixed with golden. Three blue-eared barbet subspecies are recognized as valid

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular nam ...

since 2014: *''P. c. cyanotis'' – from southeastern Nepal, Bangladesh and northeastern India to Myanmar, northern Thailand and southern China *''P. c. orientalis'' – from eastern Thailand to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam *''P. c. stuarti'' (Robinson & Kloss, 1919) – peninsular Thailand

References

* *

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q31873664 blue-eared barbet Birds of Eastern Himalaya Birds of Southeast Asia blue-eared barbet blue-eared barbet