When writing about pittas, even the most often fairly reserved HBW sounds extra love to a teenage Taylor Swift fan than a impartial scientist:
“Elusive jewels of Asian forests, those putting passerines are embellished in one of the most purest colours of any chook …”
… which is in an instant adopted through the caution “… but their shyness makes them invisible to all however essentially the most made up our minds, or luckiest, observer.”
In South Vietnam (at Cat Tien, Dilinh, Tan Phu, and Dalat, to be exact), strategically positioned chook blinds help the ones birders who don’t need to depend only on their success or patience. And so, I controlled to peer 3 of the 4 pitta species conceivable on this house. And as I had simply observed the Rusty-naped Pitta in Yunnan a couple of months previous, it used to be no longer a really perfect loss for me both.
Each Cat Tien and Tan Phu have the putting Bar-bellied Pitta.
The male is a little more into blue whilst the feminine prefers orange.
Its clinical title Hydrornis elliotii refers to Daniel Giraud Elliot (1835-1915), a US ornithologist and just a little of a traitor, if his obituary is to be believed:
“His number one passion for a few years used to be ornithological … right through the closing two decades he trustworthy his time to the learn about of mammals, which was nearly completely the topic of his researches”.
The breeding biology of this and the following pitta are coated in a downloadable poster which sadly is nearly as colorfully designed because the pittas themselves.
Except for the design of the poster, the content material could also be relatively miserable – best 2 out of 30 pitta nests had been discovered to achieve success.
And with the exception of reptiles, mammals had been the principle predators – which displays badly on Mr. Elliot, in fact.
Outdoor of a weblog submit on pittas, no person would name the Blue-rumped Pitta modest-looking, however in keeping with an previous Chinese language proverb that I simply made up, “A number of the three-eyed, a two-eyed is considered blind”.
The blue nape of the male is a long way brighter than within the subspecies present in Yunnan. Level for Vietnam.
Whoever gave this pitta its title does no longer deserve any award for creativity – the soror within the title Hydrornis soror way sister, or figuratively “carefully comparable, allied, an identical, smaller”.
Very similar to what?
In line with the HBW, this pitta feeds on snails and makes use of rocks and stones as anvils to damage their shells.
The HBW access additionally has the encouraging observation “Now not identified to be hunted through native other folks for meals or steadily stuck for cagebird business” – it’s indexed as Least Fear.
The male Blue Pitta is a lot more intensely blue than the feminine.
Or to cite eBird: “Best the male of this rotund ground-dweller is actually blue; the feminine best has a touch of blue at the rump and tail”
I really like the way in which this and different pittas dig within the soil to search for meals, like thrushes, and with the similar perspective that mixes each power and contempt. For those who had been as stunning as this male, you could possibly really feel the similar about having to dig for meals.
Thankfully, like the opposite two pittas described on this submit, the Blue Pitta could also be indexed as Least Fear.
