Wood Hoopoe - Description

Description

The wood hoopoes are a morphologically distinct group, unlikely to be mistaken for any other. These species are medium-sized (23 to 46 cm or 9 to 18 inches long, much of which is the tail). They have metallic plumage, often blue, green or purple, and lack a crest. The sexes are similar in all but one species, the Forest Wood Hoopoe. Their bills are either red or black, although young red-billed species also have black bills and bill colour is correlated with age. The legs are scarlet or black; the legs are short, with thick tarsi. When climbing up the trunks of trees they do so in the manner of a woodpecker, and when feeding on the ground they hop instead of walking like the true Hoopoe. Their tails are long and strongly graduated (the central feathers are the longest), and marked conspicuously with white, as are their wings.

Read more about this topic:  Wood Hoopoe

Famous quotes containing the word description:

    The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.
    Freda Adler (b. 1934)

    Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.
    Paul Tillich (1886–1965)

    It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any other place.
    Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)