Mousebird

Blue neck Mouse bird ( Urocolius macrourus )

The mouse Birds ( Coliidae ) are the only family in the order of the mouse Birds ( Coliiformes ). In this family there are two genera and six species. They owe their name, similar to the mice, their social life and movement to scurry like a mouse through the bushes.

Mouse birds are small, delicate birds and come exclusively in Africa, south of the Sahara, before. They inhabit scrubland, savannas, forests and forest edges, parks and orchards in the cities, among others, in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and Nigeria. The gregarious birds are sometimes to be found in groups of twenty to thirty animals.

There are outer turning toes, with which they move sent in the trees at her feet. With its sturdy, sharp claws, they can be suspended upside down from the branches. If they rest together, they huddle together tightly and warm each other. They have long, stiff tail feathers, a soft, dense, gray to brown plumage and a head cover. Due to their large feathers they can move safely through a briar fast and agile. Your short, powerful beaks are bent downward. In the body color and body shape to the different types hardly differ. Males and females alike. Their cup-shaped nests they create in the trees or bushes. A clutch consists of two to four (sometimes up to six) brown speckled white to cream-colored eggs. They feed mainly on berries and fruits.

Fossil mouse birds are known from Europe. So Alphonse Milne -Edwards described the taxon Colius palustris from the Miocene initially as sparrow bird, however, the German paleontologist Peter Ballmann classified this bird in 1969 in the family of mouse birds.

Genera and species

• Colius Speckled mouse bird ( Colius striatus)
• Rufous Mouse bird ( Colius castanotus )
• Bald Mouse bird ( Colius leucocephalus)
• White-backed mouse bird ( Colius Colius )

• Blue neck Mouse bird ( Urocolius macrourus )
• Rotzügel mouse bird ( Urocolius indicus)