The Hoopoes are a small Old World family of two or three species (see below) of similar birds. All have long, thin, and decurved bills; broad round wings; square tails crossed by a wide white band, and long erectile crests. This Madagascar Hoopoe (left) has its crest erected. All species also have dramatic black and white wing patterns (the patterns vary between the species) that show in flight or, as below (same bird as upper left), when the bird is preening. Behaviorally, they remind me (a New World resident) of American flickers. Both hoopoes and flickers appear superficial to be birds of the trees (and both nest in tree cavities), but each spend most of their foraging time on the ground, probing the leaf-litter. Hoopoes are exotic in appearance, but they are open-country birds -- birds of savanna and broken woodlands -- and do not occur in dense jungle (e.g., absent from rain forests of the Congo basin).
