I also mentioned “hummingbird” in that thread and was corrected – Thailand has sunbirds, not hummingbirds. I’m afraid another correction may be needed. :o
We have many types of birds (and lizards, insects, etc.) who are happy to visit my wife’s wonderful fruit and flower gardens, but the birds which she calls กรงหัวจุก (“Krong-hua-juk”) excite her more than any others. Two of them are building a nest in our rain gutter, so a baby may be on its way.
She tells me these are government-protected (endangered species) and are prized as cage birds. A poor neighbor recently purchased a pair for $100 – at least a month’s disposable income for him! I’m embarrassed to know almost nothing about birds, but these have a crest and head-tail(?) which they inflate similar to peacock. Using Google I translated the bird’s name to Red-whiskered Bulbul (Pycnonotus jocosus), and my wife agreed that the pictures at Google Images were her birds. Wikipedia’s comment sounded right:
But the pictures didn’t seem right: they had no stripes, and a much smaller crest. There are several other species in Pycnonotus, but none were closer.
While Googling around, I chanced on the Hoopoe (Upupa epops) and my wife was excited to see the pictures: “That’s it! That’s it!” Hoopoe is in a single-species family, in a different Order (Coraciiformes) from the bulbuls (in Passeriformes). (Hoopoe might even be in the single-species Order Upupiformes !)
The Wikipedia article about Hoopoe has amazing facts: “King of birds” in Greek play, national bird of Israel, etc. But my wife refuses to confirm that our birds make the oop-oop-oop sound. :dubious:
Could it be the กรงหัวจุก = Red-whiskered Bulbul equation is mistaken? I’ll try to take some photographs if any expert comes forth to help.
More data: Listening to on-line bird songs, my wife agrees the sound is that of the Red-whiskered Bulbul, not of the Hoopoe, which can be heard at its Wikipedia page. But my wife, I, and some others all agree the Hoopoe images are the spitting image of our birds. And her sister, looking only at the birds, called them กะรางหัวขวาน, the Thai word for Hoopoe.
Obviously, our birds are not Bulbul-Hoopoe hybrids :smack: – the birds are in different Orders!
I’ll take some photos and post them. As I mentioned the birds change their head-tails(?) depending on sexual mood(?), so photo results may be variable.
I’m more familiar with North American birds than birds elsewhere in the world, but I have mental images of both the bulbuls and the hoopoes in my mind, and they don’t look that much alike to me.
I’ve lived in Viet Nam and red-whiskered bulbuls are pretty common there, usually seen in cages unfortunately. I’ve seen hoopoes in both South Africa and Tibet. They really don’t look very similar to the bulbul. Are you seeing them from a long way away?
Here are some pictures.
In one image a bird is in the rain gutter where they’re building a nest.
For extra credit identify the tree they’re sitting in in other images.
As I mentioned, our neighbor has a bulbul in cage. I took pictures of it, but don’t post – it seems obviously different from ours.
ETA: Link to gallery above works only when I’m logged in. :smack:
Try these:
Those are Hoopoes. One of the most easily recognizable birds in the world.
Here’s a Red-whisked Bulbul. About the only point of similarity is that both birds are crested. Hoopoes are larger, have much longer curved bills, black-and-white barring on the wings, a differently shaped crest, and lack red on the face or under the tail.
I really like Hoopoes, not the least because they have one of the funniest sounding scientific names: Upopa epops. All three names are imitative of its call, in English, Latin, and Greek respectively.
Thank you very much, Colibri. I’ll tell my wife to call them กะรางหัวขวา instead of กรงหัวจุก . They do seem special in many ways, and we feel fortunate they’ve picked the rain gutter atop our house to make babies! (It also strikes me as special that, according to Wikipedia, in the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, the Hoopoe is separated into a single-species order, the Upupiformes.)
In defense of our ignorance, know that we’re simple-minded simple rural people. My wife delights in the flora and fauna. I delight in her delight, but spend much of the time when I should be bird-watching, arguing politics on SDMB instead. :smack:
ETA: The suggestion that they were Hoopoe (which I’d never heard of) came about via a sort of serendipity. I wanted to describe them, but didn’t know the right terms; typed “bird crest” at Google Images and Mrs. Septimus, looking over my shoulder, excitedly cried “That’s it!! That’s our birds!” when Google presented Hoopoe image.
Incidentally, just in December I added Red-whisked Bulbul to my life list at the L.A. County Arboretum of all places. Dozens of them, just sitting there almost screaming “I’m not your average North American bird” - a bunch of escaped captive birds are doing just fine.
Jealous of your bird diversity over there, septimus. Might have to try to get out to Thailand someday.
Hoopoes are very distinctive, but Sibley-Ahlquist is somewhat out of date, being based on data from before DNA analysis was as refined as it is now. Most recent classifications I have seen keep the family within the Coraciiformes (with kingfishers, hornbills, and many other less familiar birds). A recent study splits the Hoopoe, wood-hoopoes, and hornbills from the Coraciiformes as their own order, but this is in dispute.
“Folk-taxonomy” is often very good - people recognize and distinguish the species around them - but it can sometimes be difficult to identify exactly what a species a common name corresponds to.
Thanks to all. I’m not really a “nature lover” but it seems specially pleasing to me to have these beautiful birds staying with us! Most important, they delight my wife and her delight delights me! I almost want to start a thread: “These days I’m often happy!”
(To those who wonder how we could confuse hoopoes as bulbuls, the Thai word for red-whiskered bulbul emphasises its crest; my wife had never seen one so, on seeing the hoopoe’s magnificent crest she assumed it was the talked-about bird with crest in its name! :smack: )
In addition to the hoopoes we have other varieties of songbirds that visit, lots of doves, a black crow in our orchard, and large egrets. Occasionally sunbirds or owls visit. We have five species of lizard near our house; only two lizard species live in the house but these include a few of the scary looking Tukay lizards (Gekko gecko). My wife says a house with Tukays is a happy house. Mammals include squirrels, bats and occasional mongoose and, I’m afraid, occasional rats. Various snakes show up from time – don’t know species but include python and either King cobra or Siamese cobra (or both). Too many types of insect and arthropod to mention, of which the scariest is large centipede (like the one in this video killing a tarantula).
But my wife is most interested in flora, not fauna. In addition to many types of fruit, flower, legume, etc., she has an envied collection of herbs, chiles, basils etc. And the coveted cone mushroom, cultivated by termites and usually found on forested hills, grows in our old orchard.
Sorry for bumping this near-Zombie, but it seems an amusing coincidence that we now do have a couple of real red-whiskered bulbuls in addition to our hoopoes! (At least my wife insists they look just like the red-whiskered bulbuls in Google Images – I’ve poor eyesight and have caught only glimpses.)
My wife seems suddenly to have turned into a bird freak. She’s very low-tech – almost rooting for power failure and flooding so we can use lanterns and boats as in the old days :smack: – but hunted down camera and binoculars to look at these bulbuls. They like to perch in a jujube tree near our house; we’ve not spotted their nest, if any.
The hoopoe nest, BTW, is only a few feet from this laptop, though on the opposite of a wall. It’s only a few feet from the outside area where my wife spends much of her day, so the hoopoes must not be too shy. We can see the hoopoes feed their baby, though would need a ladder to glimpse the baby itself.
I guess my wife’s gardens are a good habitat for some birds: set back 200 meters from the road, with a wide variety of trees, flowers, herbs, and, therefore, insects. Much of the neighboring land is boring sugarcane fields.
