''Crinifer'' is a genus 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 ...

s in the

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 ( ...

family. They are restricted to

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

. Formerly, the genus only contained the plaintain-eaters, but in 2021 go-away-birds were merged into the genus. They are large noisy and conspicuous birds, but lack the brilliant colours of their relatives. They are mainly grey, with a long tail and an erectile head crest. They feed on fruit, especially

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 ...

, seeds and other vegetable matter. Unlike many of the brighter forest dwelling turacos these are birds of African open country and have drab grey and white

plumage Plumage ( "feather") is a layer of feathers that covers a bird and the pattern, colour, and arrangement of those feathers. The pattern and colours of plumage differ between species and subspecies and may vary with age classes. Within species, ...

. In Southern Africa these birds are known as kwêvoëls, though they are also called loeries along with the other turacos. The go-away-birds are named for their raucous "go away" call. The genus was erected by the Polish zoologist

Feliks Paweł Jarocki Feliks Paweł Jarocki (Pacanów, 14 January 1790 – 25 March 1865, Warsaw) was a Polish zoologist and entomologist. Life Jarocki was a Doctor of Liberal Arts and Philosophy. He organized and managed the Zoological Cabinet of the Royal Univers ...

in 1821 with the

western plantain-eater The western plantain-eater (''Crinifer piscator''), also known as the gray plantain-eater or western gray plantain-eater, is a large member of the turaco family, a group of large arboreal near-passerine birds restricted to Africa. This species i ...

(''Crinifer piscator'') as the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

. The name combines the Latin ''crinis'' meaning "hair" and ''-fer'' meaning "bearing". The genus now contains five species:.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q570640 Crinifer Taxa named by Feliks Paweł Jarocki