Purple Roller (Coracias naevius)
About the Purple Roller
The name "purple roller" can also refer to the azure dollarbird (Eurystomus azureus) of Indonesia. The purple roller (Coracias naevius), or rufous-crowned roller, is a medium-sized bird widespread in sub-Saharan Africa. Compared with other rollers its colours are rather dull and its voice harsh and grating. The purple roller was formally described in 1800 by the French zoologist François Marie Daudin under the binomial name Coracias naevia. Daudin's description was based on a specimen collected in Senegal. The specific epithet is from Latin naevius meaning "spotted" or "marked". A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2018 found that the purple roller was most closely related to the racket-tailed roller (Coracias spatulatus).
No audio on this page yet
We only publish recordings we may use commercially, because this site is supported by ads. xeno-canto lists 11 recordings for this species: 1 CC BY-NC-ND. None of them permits commercial use, so there is no player here — the page is kept as a profile so the bird is not missing from the guide.
As soon as someone uploads a freely licensed recording, we mirror it and the player appears here.
Listed as recorded in Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya in the xeno-canto catalogue.
Related species you can hear
- European RollerCoracias garrulusrecording
- Indochinese RollerCoracias affinisrecording
- Racket-tailed RollerCoracias spatulatusrecording
This species has no recording here yet — these relatives do, so you can hear what the family sounds like.