Blue-throated roller

Blue-throated roller
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Coraciiformes
Family:	Coraciidae
Genus:	Eurystomus
Species:	E. gularis
Binomial name
Eurystomus gularis Vieillot, 1819[2]

The blue-throated roller (Eurystomus gularis) is a species of roller in the Coraciidae family, it is found in western Sub-Saharan Africa.

Description

The blue-throated roller is a dumpy, large headed, thick-necked bird that frequents the tops of trees. Overall is is a drak bird, mainly chestnut brown with a bright yellow bill and a blue patch on the throat, a blue tail and purplish blue wings. Juvenile birds show bluish on the underparts. They are rather long winged rollers and can give a falcon like silhouette in flight.^[3] They measure 25 cm in length; the males weigh 82–117.5 g, the females 88–108g.^[4]

specimen at Nairobi National Museum

Distribution

The blue-throated roller occurs in Western sub-Saharan Africa from Sierra Leone and Guinea in the west, to Cameroon, south through Gabon to northern Angola, in Cuanza Norte and Lunda and west to south-eastern Uganda.^[3] Also on Bioko Island.^[5]

Habitat

The blue-throated roller tends to remain high up in the tops of trees and hunts above the canopy of primary and secondary rainforest, plantations, gallery forests and relict forest patches in cleared regions. They prefer clearings, riversides and giant emergent trees.^[3]

Habits

The blue-throated roller perches high up either as singles or in pairs on bare branches, frequently at the very top of the canopy, often sitting for long periods, and sometime making their shrill chattering calls. When active the hawk insects in the air and aggressively defend their territory from other bird species. In the late after noon the birds gather in small flocks, often mixed with broad-billed rollers, to feed on ants and termites which emerge after rain. The rollers feed on these insects in flight, acrobatically chasing them and eating them on the wing. This activity continues until dusk, one roller may eat over 700 insects weighing 40g.^[3]

The blue-throated roller is a territorial species when breeding and both courtship and territorial defence involve noisy aerial chases. The nest is an unlined cavity, normally about 10m up in the trunk of a tree on the edge of a clearing; 2-3 eggs are laid with laying recorded in Febryuary to March in the Ivory Coast, February to April in Ghana, April and September in Nigeria, January in Gabon and April and October in the Democratic Republic of Congo.^[3]

References