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.
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“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
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