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 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 separa ...

. 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 else ...

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 in honor of the French navy surgeon and naturalist Charles Coquerel.

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

turaco The turacos make up the bird family Musophagidae ( "banana-eaters"), which includes plantain-eaters and go-away-birds. In southern Africa both turacos and go-away-birds are commonly known as loeries. They are semi-zygodactylous: the fourth ( ...

s. 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 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

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 ...

s and other

arthropod Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and cuticle made of chiti ...

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 ...

, 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 A home range is the area in which an animal lives and moves on a periodic basis. It is related to the concept of an animal's territory which is the area that is actively defended. The concept of a home range was introduced by W. H. Burt in 1943. He ...

. Towards the end of the dry season, birds form monogamous 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 or a grasshopper), 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 th ...

as the narrow-striped mongoose, the small Indian civet and the

common brown lemur The common brown lemur (''Eulemur fulvus'') is a species of lemur in the family Lemuridae. It is found in Madagascar and has been introduced to Mayotte. Taxonomy Five additional currently recognized species of lemur were until 2001 considered ...

, snakes such as the Malagasy giant hognose, and birds such as the

Madagascar harrier-hawk The Madagascar harrier-hawk (''Polyboroides radiatus'') is a very large species of bird of prey in the family Accipitridae, endemic to Madagascar. Description The Madagascar harrier-hawk is a largish raptor with long and broad wings which when f ...

, the

cuckoo roller The cuckoo-roller or courol (''Leptosomus discolor'')del Hoyo, J. Elliott, A. & Sargatal, J. (2001) is the only bird in the family Leptosomidae , which was previously often placed in the order Coraciiformes but is now placed in its own order Lept ...

and the Malagasy coucal.

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 nat ...

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