IDENTITY:
Adult male has pinkish to sandy-buff plumage on head, neck, mantle and underparts (more pinkish). Rump and belly are white.
The rounded wings are black, barred white across the primary tips. Inner primaries show white tips. When the wings are closed, we can see several broad white bars.
The slightly rounded tail is black with only one white bar.
On the head, the conspicuous crest is sandy-buff with black and white tips. This crest is usually depressed, but during the displays, the bird opens it as a wonderful fan. This crest is composed of 28 feathers.
The long, down-curved bill of about 5-6 cm long is blackish, paler at base. Eyes are dark brown. Legs and feet are grey.
Female is almost similar in plumage, but she is slightly smaller than male. Her plumage is often duller with paler throat.
Juvenile resembles female with shorter crest and bill. It has white commissures, making easy for parents to see them in the darkness of the nest.
HABIT AND HABITED:
The hoopoe has two basic requirements of its habitat: bare or lightly vegetated ground on which to forage and vertical surfaces with cavities (such as trees, cliffs or even walls, nestboxes, haystacks, and abandoned burrows)
FOOD:
The diet of the hoopoe is mostly composed of insects, although small reptiles, frogs and plant matter such as seeds and berries are sometimes taken as well. It is a solitary forager which typically feeds on the ground. More rarely they will feed in the air, where their strong and rounded wings make them fast and manoeuverable, in pursuit of numerous swarming insects.
VOICE:
A repetitive hoop, hoop, hoop: similar to call of Oriental Cuckoo.
INFO:
The name of this bird comes from its call hoop-hoop-hoop. Very nice bird with conspicuous crest often fanned, the Hoopoe is often heard in the country. It perches in open, giving repeatedly its typical call.
Hoopoes (Upupa epops) are colourful birds found across Afro-Eurasia, notable for their distinctive "crown" of feathers. Three living and one extinct species are recognized, though for many years all were lumped as a single species.
Upupa and epops are respectively the Latin and Ancient Greek names for the hoopoe; both, like the English name, are onomatopoeic forms which imitate the cry of the bird.
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