Where does it lives?

There is two species of picathartes: the White-necked Rockfowl and the Grey-necked Rockfowl but both feels reluctant to steal, are cavernicolous and seems completely bald. They are fine and slim birds, of a size slightly greater than a pigeon, with well-smoothed coverts.

The White-necked Rockfowl (Picathartes gymnocephalus), seen in the Guinean forest block: Sierra Leone, Guinée (Conakry), Liberia, Côte d' Ivoire, Ghana and Togo, is distinguished from its cousin by its relatively dull colours: the head is beige yellow on the front, a double black cap covering the sides and the back of the head. The remainder of the body is very clear grey on the neck and the belly; the top of the back, the wings and the tail is dark grey and takes a greenish reflection when a sunbeam illuminates the bird; the wing remiges are black.

The Grey-necked Rockfowl (Picathartes oreas), occupies the Western part of the Congolese forest block, the bird having been seen only in the north of Gabon, the Equatorial Guinea (including Fernando Po island), extreme east of Nigeria and the south and the south-west of Cameroon. It is in these last areas that were made our observations. Detailed description of both species: click on  one of those links below head and neck compared body compared

Its belly, very clear yellow, presents apricot reflections to the sun. The grey of the neck is more constant than that of gymnocephalus but it is the head that is spectacular: divided into three zones. The frontal zone is coloured of a light blue, then come two black triangles located on each side of the head and surrounding the eyes. Lastly, the posterior part of cranium is constant red. There again, the sun animates the blue and the red parts with metallized reflections. The long legs are clear grey and the nozzle is black, the blue of the head being prolonged on the culmen to the nostrils placed very ahead. In the collections the skins lose any reflection and the blue and the red become white. Accentuated by the shade of the forest, the bird appears rather dull and in spite of the sharp colours of its head, it is difficult to see it and to follow it when it moves in the low vegetation of the law layers of the forest..

Picathartes oreas is thus a very discrete bird of the wet tropical forest, which is pointed out neither by its displacements nor by its cries. Its nests are built in little man attended places with the result that very often it is completely ignored by the local populations . However, known of the hunters, its name, in the dialects of the ethnic groups of the area of South-Cameroon (Bassa, Eton, Ewondo, and Bulu), means literally: hen of rock (note that in French: hen of rock: "poule de roches", designs the stone-partridge: ptilopachus petrosus). In one of these ethnic groups, one undoubtedly allots to its flesh curative and imaginary properties, which turn it in a considerable game for the hunters. Usually it interests especially the children of the villages, which plunder the occupied nests and sell the young on the markets. This practice explains the very fear attitude of the couples nesting near the plantations of this area.

next page