When writing about pittas, even the usually slightly reserved HBW sounds extra prefer to a teenage Taylor Swift fan than a impartial scientist:
“Elusive jewels of Asian forests, these placing passerines are adorned in among the purest colours of any fowl …”
… which is straight away adopted by the warning “… but their shyness makes them invisible to all however essentially the most decided, or luckiest, observer.”
In South Vietnam (at Cat Tien, Dilinh, Tan Phu, and Dalat, to be exact), strategically positioned fowl blinds help these birders who don’t need to rely solely on their luck or persistence. And so, I managed to see three of the 4 pitta species attainable on this space. And as I had simply seen the Rusty-naped Pitta in Yunnan a couple of months earlier, it was not an incredible loss for me both.
Each Cat Tien and Tan Phu have the placing Bar-bellied Pitta.
The male is a little more into blue whereas the feminine prefers orange.
Its scientific title Hydrornis elliotii refers to Daniel Giraud Elliot (1835-1915), a US ornithologist and a little bit of a traitor, if his obituary is to be believed:
“His main curiosity for a few years was ornithological … over the past 20 years he devoted his time to the examine of mammals, which turned nearly solely 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.
Aside from the design of the poster, the content material can also be considerably miserable – solely 2 out of 30 pitta nests have been discovered to achieve success.
And aside from reptiles, mammals have been the primary predators – which displays badly on Mr. Elliot, in fact.
Outdoors of a weblog publish on pittas, no person would name the Blue-rumped Pitta modest-looking, however in response to an previous Chinese language proverb that I simply made up, “Among the many three-eyed, a two-eyed is considered blind”.
The blue nape of the male is way brighter than within the subspecies present in Yunnan. Level for Vietnam.
Whoever gave this pitta its title doesn’t deserve any award for creativity – the soror within the title Hydrornis soror means sister, or figuratively “carefully associated, allied, related, smaller”.
Much like what?
In keeping with the HBW, this pitta feeds on snails and makes use of rocks and stones as anvils to smash their shells.
The HBW entry additionally has the encouraging assertion “Not recognized to be hunted by native folks for meals or commonly caught for cagebird commerce” – it’s listed as Least Concern.
The male Blue Pitta is way more intensely blue than the feminine.
Or to cite eBird: “Solely the male of this rotund ground-dweller is actually blue; the feminine solely has a touch of blue on the rump and tail”
I like the best way this and different pittas dig within the soil to search for meals, like thrushes, and with the identical angle that mixes each vitality and contempt. When you have been as lovely as this male, you’ll really feel the identical about having to dig for meals.
Luckily, like the opposite two pittas described on this publish, the Blue Pitta can also be listed as Least Concern.
