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African Hoopoe (Upupa africana)

African Hoopoe
Photo: Greg Schechter from San Francisco, USA via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 — free for commercial reuse.

About the African Hoopoe

The Eurasian hoopoe or common hoopoe (Upupa epops) is the most widespread species of hoopoe. It is a distinctive cinnamon coloured bird with black and white wings, a tall erectile crest, a broad white band across a black tail, and a long narrow downcurved bill. Its call is a soft "oop-oop-oop". The Eurasian hoopoe is native to Europe, Asia and Africa. It is migratory in the northern part of its range. Some ornithologists consider the Madagascar hoopoe (U. marginata) as a subspecies. The African hoopoe, subspecies U. e. africana, has sometimes been treated as a separate species.

Source: Eurasian hoopoe on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA

A real field recording of the African Hoopoe. Press play and focus on the rhythm and pitch of each phrase.

Listen

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.

Call (0:31) via xeno-canto.org/601892, licensed CC BY-SA — free for commercial use.

1 recording on this page · licensed CC BY-SA ×1 · mirrored on this server, free for commercial reuse · recorded in Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia · xeno-canto lists 63 recordings for this species in total.

Similar species

Species grouped by shared genus, family and range.