Violet wood hoopoe
Species of bird
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The violet wood hoopoe (Phoeniculus damarensis) is a species of bird in the family Phoeniculidae. It is found in Angola, Kenya, Namibia, and Tanzania. It looks similar to the black-billed wood hoopoe but with a red beak and a green throat. It has coppery and violet mantle feathers.[2]
| Violet wood hoopoe | |
|---|---|
| |
| Illustration (above) with black-billed wood hoopoe (below) | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Bucerotiformes |
| Family: | Phoeniculidae |
| Genus: | Phoeniculus |
| Species: | P. damarensis |
| Binomial name | |
| Phoeniculus damarensis (Ogilvie-Grant, 1901) | |
 | |
| General range: the Angolan mopane woodlands | |
Taxonomy
The violet wood hoopoe was formally described in 1901 by the Scottish ornithologist William Robert Ogilvie-Grant under the binomial name Irrisor damarensis. The specific epithet is from Damaraland in Namibia.[3] The violet wood hoopoe is now one of five species placed in the genus Phoeniculus that was introduced in 1821 by the Polish zoologist Feliks Paweł Jarocki.[4]
Two subspecies are recognised:[4]
- P. d. damarensis (Ogilvie-Grant, 1901) – Angola and Namibia
- P. d. granti (Neumann, 1903) – central, southeast Kenya
The subspecies P. d. granti has sometimes been considered as a separate species as its distribution is separated by a very large distance from that of the nominate race.[4][5]
The violet wood hoopoe was formerly considered to be conspecific with the green wood hoopoe (Phoeniculus purpureus).[6][7][8][9] It has been argued that the violet wood hoopoe should be considered as a distinct species because of its more terrestrial foraging behaviour compared to the more arboreal foraging of the green wood hoopoe.[10]
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