[Species] | Groove-billed ani
Groove-billed anis (Crotophaga sulcirostris) are tropical, partially migratory birds that occur from coastal Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela to Mexico, the Bahamas and southern bits of the USA. Only the northernmost populations in Texas and northern Mexico migrate during the winter.
On average groove-billed anis are 34 centimetres long and weigh somewhere in-between 70 and 90 grams. Their plumage, which is entirely black, makes them look little like their relatives in the cuckoo order, but they share the same toe arrangement called zygodactylous, where two toes point forwards and two point backwards. Other birds that share this arrangement are woodpeckers and parrots.
Groove-billed anis occur mostly in thick brush, overgrown pastures and in the northern parts of their distribution also dense thickets close to open grassland, marshes or forest edges. Further down in the tropics they inhabit any kind of semi-open lowland habitat, strictly avoiding unbroken forest.
Like willie-wagtails, groove-billed anis have long tails that they twitch and flip around quickly, likely to startle insect prey into flushing. They also forage by merely hopping and running on the ground, or by gleaning food-items from bushes. They, like other members of their order, closely associate with cattle in open pastures to take animals flushed by the larger animals. They will also follow swarms of army ants to eat the insects or other creatures flushed by them.
Their diet consists mostly of large insects, such as grasshoppers, beetles and others. They may be beneficial to the cattle they follow around in that they take external parasites from them. Their diet is supplemented by spiders, lizards and various other small creatures, as well as small fruits and berries.
The male feeds the female during courtship. They, like the other two species of ani, live in small groups of 2 to 5 breeding pairs who defend a single territory and lay their eggs in one communal nest. A group may include extra non-breeding adults that help raising the chicks.
Each female in a group lays 3 - 4 pale blue eggs on average. All adults incubate the eggs, with dominant males, or males in general doing it more throughout the night. The incubation period lasts 13 to 14 days. The young are fed by all adults and begin climbing out of the nest roughly 6 to 7 days after hatching, and make their first flight attempts after 10 days, with them being capable of proper flight roughly 7 days later.
The populations in the USA are likely stable, whereas the more tropical populations like have been increasing over the last few decades as the clearing of forests gives them more habitat to reside in. The IUCN evaluates the species to be one of least concern.
Photo credits: Nick Carson, Mario E. Campos S, Becky Matsubara
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