Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Coliiformes > Coliidae > Colius > Colius colius

Colius colius (White-backed Mousebird)

Wikipedia Abstract

The white-backed mousebird (Colius colius) is a large species of mousebird. It is distributed in western and central regions of southern Africa from Namibia and southern Botswana eastwards to Central Transvaal and the eastern Cape. This mousebird prefers scrubby dry habitats, such as thornveld, fynbos scrub and semi-desert. The speckled mousebird can be distinguished from this species by its differently coloured beak, legs and upperparts. In handling mousebirds the tail should be avoided, as the long retrices come out so easily as to suggest that it is a sacrificial defence mechanism.
View Wikipedia Record: Colius colius

Infraspecies

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
17
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
43
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 33.4761
EDGE Score: 3.54027

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  41 grams
Birth Weight [1]  2.7 grams
Female Weight [3]  45 grams
Diet [2]  Frugivore, Nectarivore, Herbivore
Diet - Fruit [2]  70 %
Diet - Nectar [2]  10 %
Diet - Plants [2]  20 %
Forages - Mid-High [2]  70 %
Forages - Understory [2]  30 %
Female Maturity [3]  0 years 12 months
Clutch Size [4]  3
Maximum Longevity [5]  8 years

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Cape Floristic Region South Africa No
Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland No
Succulent Karoo Namibia, South Africa No

Prey / Diet

Salvadora persica (Real Mustard Tree)[6]
Sideroxylon inerme[6]

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
1Terje Lislevand, Jordi Figuerola, and Tamás Székely. 2007. Avian body sizes in relation to fecundity, mating system, display behavior, and resource sharing. Ecology 88:1605
2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
3Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
4Jetz W, Sekercioglu CH, Böhning-Gaese K (2008) The Worldwide Variation in Avian Clutch Size across Species and Space PLoS Biol 6(12): e303. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060303
5del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
6Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0