Racket-tailed Roller (Coracias spatulatus)
About the Racket-tailed Roller
The racket-tailed roller (Coracias spatulatus) is a species of bird in the family Coraciidae. It is found in southern Africa from Angola, south-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and southern Tanzania to northern Botswana, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique. The racket-tailed roller was formally described in 1880 by the naturalist Roland Trimen under its current binomial name Coracias spatulatus from a specimen collected near the Zambezi River in southern Africa. The specific epithet spatulatus is Modern Latin meaning "spatulate" or "spoon-shaped". The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2018 found that the racket-tailed roller was most closely related to the purple roller (Coracias naevius).
A real field recording of the Racket-tailed Roller. Press play and focus on the rhythm and pitch of each phrase.
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Our streaming copies are mirrored from the original xeno-canto file and transcoded to 96 kbps mono — a modification, so we note it here; the licence for each recording is named in its credit below.
1 recording on this page · licensed CC BY-SA ×1 · mirrored on this server, free for commercial reuse · recorded in Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe · xeno-canto lists 11 recordings for this species in total.
Similar species
- Abyssinian RollerCoracias abyssinicusprofile
- Blue-bellied RollerCoracias cyanogasterprofile
- European RollerCoracias garrulusrecording
- Indian RollerCoracias benghalensisprofile
- Indochinese RollerCoracias affinisrecording
- Lilac-breasted RollerCoracias caudatusprofile
Species grouped by shared genus, family and range.