Coquerel's coua (''Coua coquereli'') is a species of
cuckoo
Cuckoos are birds in the Cuculidae family, the sole taxon in the order Cuculiformes . The cuckoo family includes the common or European cuckoo, roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals and anis. The coucals and anis are sometimes separ ...
in the family
Cuculidae.
It is
endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...
to
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
. Its
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 ...
is subtropical or tropical dry
forest
A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...
s. It was named in 1867 by the French naturalist
Alfred Grandidier
Alfred Grandidier (20 December 1836 – 13 September 1921) was a French naturalist and explorer.
From a very wealthy family, at the age of 20, he and his brother, Ernest Grandidier (1833–1912), undertook a voyage around the world. At first ...
in honor of the French navy surgeon and naturalist
Charles Coquerel
Jean Charles Coquerel (2 December 1822 – 12 April 1867) was a French navy surgeon, algologist, and entomologist.
Coquerel collected insects in Madagascar and neighbouring islands. A number of these were described after his death by Léon Fairma ...
.
[
]
Description
Coquerel's coua is approximately in length and has a large blue patch of bare skin around the eye, a characteristic of the ''Coua
Couas are large, mostly terrestrial birds of the cuckoo family, endemic to the island of Madagascar.
Couas are reminiscent of African turacos when walking along tree branches, and they likewise feature brightly coloured bare skin around the eyes ...
'' genus that is similar to African turacos. The plumage is silky, the crown is black, the upper parts and tail are light brown or greyish-brown, and the lower breast and belly is suffused with red. The iris is red and the beak and legs are slaty grey. As a member of the cuckoo family, it has a reversible third toe and resembles the coucal
A coucal is one of about 30 species of birds in the cuckoo family. All of them belong in the subfamily Centropodinae and the genus ''Centropus''. Unlike many Old World cuckoos, coucals are not brood parasites, though they do have their own repr ...
in its method of scrambling through tangled bushes and lianas while searching for food. Observations indicate that it can climb about above the ground.
Distribution and habitat
Coquerel's coua is endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...
to Madagascar where it lives in the dry deciduous forest
The tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forest is a habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature and is located at tropical and subtropical latitudes. Though these forests occur in climates that are warm year-round, and may receive ...
and gallery forest in the west of the island. It shares this habitat with the giant coua
The giant coua (''Coua gigas'') is a bird species from the coua genus in the cuckoo family that is endemic to the dry forests of western and southern Madagascar. It is suggested that couas probably originated from a particular Asian ground-cucko ...
(''Coua gigas''). In this area, the wet season is from December to February, and this is followed by a long dry season.[
]
Behaviour
Coquerel's coua is predominantly a ground-dwelling bird. It feeds mainly on insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...
s and other arthropod
Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a Segmentation (biology), segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and Arth ...
s, with seeds also forming part of the diet. The diet and the feeding strategies used vary with the season, and include gleaning, probing the litter, chasing prey
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the ...
, leaping and sallying into the air to catch insects.
Coquerel's coua is a solitary bird during most of the year, each bird having a home range. Towards the end of the dry season, birds form monogamous
Monogamy ( ) is a form of Dyad (sociology), dyadic Intimate relationship, relationship in which an individual has only one Significant other, partner during their lifetime. Alternately, only one partner at any one time (Monogamy#Serial monogamy, ...
pairs, usually jointly occupying their individual home ranges. Breeding takes place in the wet season, between November and April. On several occasions males have been observed approaching females carrying a gift (a 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 ...
or a grasshopper
Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago.
Grasshopp ...
), but after mating, has consumed the insect himself. The nests are built a few metres off the ground in dense vegetation. Unlike most other cuckoos, this bird builds its own nest, incubates its own eggs and rears its young.[ Clutch size averages 1.8 and the minimum incubation time is 13 days. The young have a patterned interior to the mouth (as do several related species) which may visually stimulate the parent to feed the juvenile. They leave the nest after about nine days, when still covered with down and unable to fly.][ They then perch on the ground or among the undergrowth awaiting visits by the adults, which feed them caterpillars and crickets. This early fledging may be because of the danger of nest predation by such ]predators
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the ...
as the narrow-striped mongoose
The narrow-striped mongoose or narrow-striped vontsira (''Mungotictis decemlineata'') is a member of the family Eupleridae endemic to Madagascar. It inhabits the western Madagascar succulent woodlands and northern Madagascar spiny thickets in wes ...
, the small Indian civet
The small Indian civet (''Viverricula indica'') is a civet native to South and Southeast Asia. It is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List because of its widespread distribution, widespread habitat use and healthy populations living in agr ...
and the common brown lemur, snakes such as the Malagasy giant hognose, and birds such as the Madagascar harrier-hawk, the cuckoo roller and the Malagasy coucal
The Malagasy coucal or Madagascar coucal (''Centropus toulou'') is a species of cuckoo in the family Cuculidae. It is found in Madagascar and in the Seychelles, where it occurs on Aldabra and was formerly present on Assumption Island and Cosmol ...
.[
]
Status
Although Coquerel's coua has a limited range in western Madagascar and the population appears to be decreasing, this is a slow trend and the bird is plentiful within its range. For these reasons, 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 ...
has assessed its conservation status as being of 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 ...
.
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1131683
Coua
Endemic birds of Madagascar
Taxa named by Alfred Grandidier
Birds described in 1867
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot
Madagascar dry deciduous forests