Identification

The Eurasian Hoopoe is a distinctive and exotic looking bird that looks rather like a Madagascar Hoopoe (Upupa marginata), but is unlike any other extant species.

Exotic. Enchanting. Fanciful. All of these describe the improbable appearance of an Eurasian Hoopoe. Perched, it is a sleek buff-orange bird with a longish neck and a long, slim, curved dagger of a bill that is counterbalanced by the sinuous arc of its folded crest. But in flight, it transforms into a black-and-white banded butterfly with a headdress and strangely prominent proboscis.

The Eurasian Hoopoe is 19–32 cm long, with a wingspan of 42–48 cm and a mass of 38–80 g (1 Cramp, S., Editor (1985). The Birds of the Western Palearctic. Volume 4. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Close , 2 Fry, C. H., S. Keith, and E. K. Urban, Editors (1988). The Birds of Africa. Volume 3. Parrots to Woodpeckers. Academic Press, London, UK. Close , 3 Borrow, N., and R. Demey (2001). Birds of Western Africa. Christopher Helm, London, UK. Close , 4 Rasmussen, P. C., and J. C. Anderton (2005). Birds of South Asia. The Ripley Guide. Volumes 1 and 2. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA. Close ). It shows little sexual dimorphism (except for subspecies africana, within which differences are still modest), and juveniles differ from adults mostly in their obviously shorter bills. In all plumages, the chest and belly, neck and head (except for crest), and mantle are buff-orange, or variations thereof. The vent and undertail coverts are white with dusky streaking on the sides of the vent that is often inapparent (or, in most subspecies of sub-Saharan Africa, absent). Its head sports a buff-orange fan-shaped crest that is tipped in black, or with narrow black-and-white bars , that folds into a long swept-back cowlick . Its back, wings, rump, and tail are barred thickly in black and white/orange-buff. The long (42–56 mm) bill is thin, sharply pointed, and modestly decurved; the bill of a freshly fledged juvenile is about two-thirds the length of an adult's.

The only species that is at all similar to the Eurasian Hoopoe is its closest living relative, the Madagascar Hoopoe. The two species are allopatric, but their ranges come within 420 km of each other across the Mozambique Channel, and it is certainly conceivable that a vagrant of one species might appear within the other's range.

The range of the Madagascar Hoopoe is somewhat proximate to that of the African subspecies of the Eurasian Hoopoe, Upupa epops africana (all comparisons will be to subspecies africana here). Though these two taxa are somewhat similar, they are still distinguishable in the field visually and vocally. The visual differences are as follows: 1) The folded wing of a Madagascar Hoopoe is black with 5 white (or near white) orderly bars, whereas the the folded wing of the Eurasian Hoopoe has 3–4 messy white to orange-buff bars, plus a distal spot or small triangle of white, and in males, the second and third bar sometimes merge together; 2) The mantle of a Madagascar Hoopoe is usually heavily washed with gray-olive which forms a distinct patch that contrasts with the otherwise buff-orange plumage; Eurasian Hoopoe females can have a similarly colored mantle, but it is usually less distinct; 3) Eurasian Hoopoe females often have a well-marked gray auricular patch, the presence of which seems to be correlated with distinct gray on the mantle; the Madagascar Hoopoe sometimes has gray on the auriculars, but it is less prominent and rarely forms a distinct patch; 4) the Madagascar Hoopoe has a pale gray foreneck that sometimes extends up to the chin and down through the chest; Eurasian Hoopoe females often have gray on the foreneck and/or chest, but it is distinctly darker than that of a Madagascar Hoopoe.

In flight, the Madagascar Hoopoe has a white band across the distal primaries that the African subspecies (africana) of the Eurasian Hoopoe lacks. Additionally, Eurasian Hoopoe males have a solid (or nearly solid) white patch on the secondaries rather than the barring found on female Eurasian Hoopoe and both sexes of the Madagascar Hoopoe.

Finally, the songs of these two species are quite different. The Eurasian Hoopoe repeatedly sings hoop-hoop or hoop-hoop-hoop , but the Madagascar Hoopoe produces a low cooing trill, rrrrrrooow, that increases and then drops slightly in volume is 1.5–2.5 s in duration .