Physical characteristics
The birds making the family of Musophagidae have characteristically long tails and short bills with wings that are round in shape. They may not be good fliers yet they more than make up for this deficiency with their ability to run, leap on tree twigs and walk. Their excellent ability to walk easily on the ground has been attributed to their adaptation to bend their toes backwards and forwards.
Seventeen species of the Musophagidae family are very attractively colored. Those turacos that live in forests have green, blue or purple feather coloring, with a stroke of red in their wing feathers. The green color camouflages them with the environment so that they can always keep out of harm’s way. The largest bird in the Musophagidae family is the great blue turaco and measures between 70 t0 76 cm in length. The average length of other birds in the family is 16 to 21 cm long.
Geographic range
Turacos and the plantain eaters are types of birds that are uniquely found in Africa especially the sub-Saharan Africa, which is all the parts of the African continent that is south of Sahara desert. They are specifically found in Angola, Tanzania, Gabon, Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, Malawi, Ghana, Congo, Namibia, Uganda, and Central African Republic.
Habitat
These members of the Musophagidae family mostly live in trees. They are to be found in tropical forests that are densely populated with trees. They can also be found in grasslands where trees are scarce.
Diet
Although the name of the family, Musophagidae, comes from Musophaga, which loosely means, birds that eat banana and plantains, they scarcely ever eat bananas or even plantains, which is just another name for the tropical banana. Instead, these birds feed on wild fruits as well as those grown by man. It is also common to come across some species that forage on flowers, leaves caterpillars, moths, beetles slugs, snails and termites.
Behavior and reproduction
These birds do not leave in large colonies but in small family groups and are widely believed to be monogamous in nature, that is, are attracted to only one mating partner. These birds build nests which are flat using tree twigs and both the parent birds incubate on the eggs laid by the female bird. The eggs laid by the females are always two in number. Depending on the species that a particular bird belongs in, these birds will hatch after 23 to 31 days of incubation.
Their dreaded predators include eagles and chimpanzees.
Conservation of turaco
The world conservation Union (IUCN) lists the turaco as being among the birds which are endangered and facing a very high risk of being extinct. Some of the threats posed to these birds are lack of habitat as people engage in clearing forests for farming or foe use of firewood. In Cameroon, for instance, the conservationists are working in cahoots with the locals to prevent the early extinction of this s beloved family of birds. Particular emphasis is placed on the ways of reclaiming the forests so as to provide habitat for these birds.
